Super awkward (if not worse) situation & the character flaw of social paralysis

So there's this woman I know. We'll call her V. We've known each other for six or seven years, but aren't close. Two of her children have come through my chess club (I run a middle school chess club here in my town.) We're friendly and chat during chess events, and a bit moreso lately as she's going through a divorce and has a lot of frustration to purge.

The trouble is her youngest son. Well, he was always a bit of a problem, but there's something going on that's horrifying and I am paralyzed every time I encounter it.

The kid (we'll call him B) has always been unpleasant. From the first grade, he's ill-behaved and disruptive. (Both of her children that I've dealt with were unpleasant under my watch, although the next oldest was lovely, warm, and polite the last time I saw him - he grew up a bit, I guess.) B has always been prone to disgusting behaviors that clearly make people uncomfortable. Although he always appears to be oblivious, he routinely goes for the gross - picking his nose and making a snack of it, putting his hands down his pants and smelling the results after a few warming minutes, spitting into a napkin and scrutinizing the mess in full view. That sort of thing.

He's eleven now and seems to have been full-on mugged by an early puberty. His mother is 5' 9" and he's taller than her already. The whole family is odd. But now it's gotten really strange.

Chess started up in mid-September. B has become so disruptive that his mother accompanies him, almost like a handler. At the end of the second lesson, B refused to help bag up the chessboards. He ran away from us when we asked him to get to it. His mother strode up and ordered him to get to bagging, but instead (and you could have knocked me over with a feather) he lunged for her, wrapped his hands around her throat, thumbs crossed over her windpipe and dragged her face to his. He pulled her in for a wet, loose-lipped, shudderingly lingering kiss. His mother did not react. It was stunning and the chess instructor and I just looked on in speechless horror.

A few weeks ago, V and I were talking and she was complaining that her back and neck were hurting. She and B live alone, as the other kids are grown or away at school, and the parents are in the midst of a divorce. (B lives half the time with his father.) She looks me dead in the eye, and I kid you not, says this - "I'm going to get B to massage me when we get home." Then she kind of moans it out, "He's so good. He goes so hard. And he'll massage me anywhere. He'll even do my feet. I've taught him well."

It was all I could do not to scream.

And today, well, I have no idea what to do with today. There was a tournament. V sat next to me and we were pestered by B all day. He kept demanding that she scratch his head or rub his leg. At one point, he planted another of those horrifying kisses on her mouth, but this time, let his splayed lips slide up, pressed into her cheek as an ending flourish. But I completely derailed mid-story (comprehensively, I had not a single word or thought in my head to get my mind out of the scene I was witnessing) when B scooted under the table. He rested the back of his head on my thigh and took his mother's hand and started kissing, licking, and sucking her fingertips. Before he came out from under the table, he tried to get her attention by slapping her repeatedly on the breast.

V seems completely disconnected from how appalling this is. Even if this is somehow justified (as sick as it could be) in her mind for private closeness (and I'm in no way defending it, if that would be the case) I go catatonic when she doesn't even act like it's in the slightest bizarre to do this in front of me. Indeed, in front of a roomful of people.

What the hell? What do you think you would do?

jjdebenedictis said:

There are some behavioural issues where not reacting to the child's misbehaviour is the best thing for keeping the behaviour from repeating or escalating. Any chance that's what's going on?

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Anything's possible. I have no idea what's going on. Like I said, the whole family is odd.

There was something, though. I said she didn't acknowledge what he was doing, but I forgot - when he kissed her and slid his open mouth up her face today, she did say to me (while wiping his spit off her face) "He's a weird kid." And I was stammering and said something like, "Uh, well, yeah, you know..." or some string of noncommittal words, and she said, "No, he is."

I am deeply squicked out by them. I can't even get a handle on who is the "aggressor" in the relationship. B has always been very, very strange. And I realize I'm talking about an 11 year old boy. It doesn't make me feel like a nice person to say this.

At this same tournament last year, he went up with the team to accept a trophy and when someone told him to smile for a picture, he spun around, pulled this horrible, deeply disturbing grimace and nearly two hundred adults involuntarily recoiled. It made me feel at least a little better about my struggle to override my uncharitable reaction to him.

A few weeks ago, our chess instructor paired him with my fourteen year old daughter for a game in class. He thought she could handle him. She thought she could handle him. I was out of the room and came back into chaos, my child struggling mightily not to cry.

B had needled her with cheating moves and quiet, under-his-breath taunts. When he couldn't get a rise out of her, he used his ill-gotten advantage, made a winning move, then stood up and screamed in her face, "I own you! I own you!"

It was the end of the class and my daughter fought tears all the way to the parking lot. When I was finally able to get her to talk, she said that it wasn't that he won or even that he cheated - it was a throwaway game and no one expects B to act right in a game - but that he creeps her out in some way she can't find words for.

He's really quite something. I don't know what to think.

The worst part is that I'm not sure I've ever been so derailed. During these three incidents since September, it's like I have a seizure. My brain completely blanks and I freeze. It's so repulsive, I'm just rigid and brain dead.

I cannot grow an instinct for what, if anything, I should do or say.

Thanks, guys. We did ban him from the chess club for a few weeks. He's back on a probationary trial.

As far as other kids, he's certainly acted inappropriately with kids other than my daughter. He's out of control. In just two minor examples from yesterday, my daughter saw him pin a boy to the wall with his whole body, and I got whacked in the back by a kid he had snatched up fully off his feet and started swinging the boy like a mace.

It's not that he acts out, it's much closer to that everything he does and says paralyzes adults with revulsion. It's essentially constant. Sometimes he runs out of steam and will sit quietly, but it's really only to recharge. I guess I feel better that it's not just me, but it's a matter of, like Gail said, how will it be if I didn't do anything.

I think I'm going to talk to s friend who works in the school. She may have an idea of what resource would be the best fit for a point-of-entry

cornflake said:

Child protective services is often overwhelmed with cases of real abuse. They don't generally deal with subtleties, or kids on the edge of stuff. This depends on area, on people, but mostly, it's a department with social workers trying to save kids who are living in abusive situations or ones of great neglect, and they've got way too many of those to deal with to begin with. A kid whose own behaviour is the issue, even if it's potentially tied to some potentially questionable behaviour from adults, but who is in a middle-class existence with shelter, food, no injuries, etc., is unlikely to get any CPS attention. Even if he does, they're not likely to know what to do with him.

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I wish I didn't know how utterly true this is. I have another situation in my life that this point has made more hopeless than I can say.

I do wonder, cornflake, on what transgression would the police be able to do anything? Can you call the cops over a kid kissing his mother's fingers?

I'm leaning on talking to the school. He's already under close monitoring by his teachers. I know they have to make daily reports of his behavior. I just don't know if they've got this piece of the puzzle.

I don't really know how I'm going to poll the other chess parents, though. If they haven't noticed, sweet Jesus, what a thing to put into their heads.