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overcome her concern about what the neighbors would say

and admitted that her son was beyond control.

Steven was flunking in all of his subjects except physical education. He was regularly sent out of the classroom for offenses ranging from sassing the teacher to hitting other children. When the teacher tried to punish Steven, he would challenge her: "I don't have to do what you say, you're not my mother." Confrontations with the principal ended up in the same vein: "My father won't like you threatening me."

It took me a while before I figured out why the educators hadn't stepped forward sooner. They were afraid. Steven's attitude had backed them into a corner. Their reasoning went like this: "If Steven is such a terror at school, his parents must know it. Yet they aren't doing anything to stop him. If we raise a fuss, they may take their wrath out on us."

Given the bureaucrats' fear of the "get tough" approach to education, it made sense that the principal and the teacher weren't about to jeopardize their jobs by going to bat for a kid they didn't like anyway.

When the school officials stepped forward, it gave Mrs.

Jolly courage to do the same. She found it difficult to give me specific instances of Steven's gross disrespect and irre-sponsibility. Her mind seemed to go blank when I asked her to recount exact details. I learned that Steven's antics had created so much pain that she had erected a protective barrier around her feelings. T h e barrier saved her from feelings of failure but also made her more insensitive to the necessity for change.

As Mrs. Jolly struggled to recall painful memories, Mr.

Jolly remained aloof. As his wife fought to face the truth, Steven's father persisted in denial. In speech as well tail-ored as his clothes, Mr. Jolly said, "Steven's been real bad only the past few months."

54 THE PETER PAN SYNDROME

Mrs. Jolly tried to mask her hostility and disappoint-ment. "Joe, honey, I don't think you've really noticed how bad things have been. Steven has been going steadily down-hill for several years. Remember how concerned his se-cond-grade teacher was?"

Joe raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and sighed.

"Oh." My third ear heard the unspoken comment: "What-ever you say, dear."

I resisted the temptation to launch into marriage coun-seling, knowing it would be futile. Mr. Jolly would con-tinue to deny any significant problems, while his wife was too absorbed in trying to help her son. But there was a silver lining to the tense interchange. Mrs. Jolly remem-bered a typical example of Steven's snottiness.

T h e previous Sunday, the three Jollys had had an after-church brunch at a local restaurant. After considerable badgering from him, Mrs. Jolly had agreed that Steven could have a treat when they stopped at the grocery store on their way home.

As they walked into the grocery store, Steven abrasively announced, "I'm going to get a sack of candy and I'll meet you at the check-out lane."

His mother protested slightly, saying, "I think you should have an apple instead of candy this time, Steven."

Steven's snotty attitude took command. "You said I could have a treat and I want candy. I don't want an apple.

That's stupid. I'm going to get candy."

Mrs. Jolly tried to exercise authority. "Steven, I said no candy this time. Get yourself a big juicy apple."

As always, a no brought out the worst in Steven. "That's really dumb. I'm old enough to pick out my own treat and I said I want candy." His voice had reached a screaming level and all the other customers were watching the mother being devastated by a belligerent child. Sharon Jolly was reeling from her son's disrespect and the embarrassment from the public confrontation.

IRRESPONSIBILITY 55 Steven didn't let up. "If you're going to be so dumb, then I'm just going to walk home." He started for the door.

Mrs. Jolly succumbed to the pressure. "You can't walk home, it's snowing and very cold. You'll catch cold and be sick for school tomorrow."

Steven's last shot is probably the nastiest one I've ever heard from a child so young. "Don't pretend to be nice to me, Mom. You won't let me have candy and if I catch cold, it'll be your fault anyway."

Mrs. Jolly chased after her son and caught up with him just outside the door. She was panic-stricken. She begged him to be nice and come back inside. Before he complied, he demanded that she capitulate to his request for candy.

She did, and the incident ended as abruptly as it had begun.

Lest you think that a child can be nasty to the bone, you should know that, deep inside, Steven was suffering im-measurably. T w o or three times a week he woke, scream-ing, after a ghoulish nightmare. As best he could remem-ber, ugly monsters relentlessly chased him, trying to devour him.

It didn't take lengthy dream analysis to tentatively con-clude that Steven was being victimized by his own snotti-ness. He avoided responsibility by attacking authority figures with monstrous behavior. As his irresponsibility grew, so did the monster. Without a feeling of responsibil-ity, Steven suffered low self-esteem and poor self-confi-dence. This left him vulnerable to attacks by the monster he had created. And now the monster was turning against its master.

Steven Jolly's snottiness promoted his irresponsiblity.

He was fast becoming a master of emotional blackmail, falsely perceiving that duty could be dismissed by hostility.

He was developing a trait that often occurs in victims of the Peter Pan Syndrome; that is, they are hard to love and easy to dislike.

There is an ironic twist to Steven's story. When he was

THE PETER PAN SYNDROME

seven, his mother had taken him to see a child psychiatrist because she was concerned about his attitude. T h e psychia-trist had said, "Don't discipline Steven, because you risk building a backlog of anger and hostility." Mrs. Jolly fol-lowed the psychiatrist's advice. Five years later, she was confronted with a child who had built a tremendous back-log of anger and hostility.

Few parents are confronted with the loathsome snotti-ness displayed by Steven Jolly. In most kids snottisnotti-ness takes the form of back talk or argumentativeness. Whatever the degree, some aggressiveness is to be expected as the boy struggles to become a man. Rickey used an aggressive an-gelic countenance, and Steven was just plain aggressive.

Billy Winters used a marvelous technique that is as old as children's rebellion. He did nothing. He just stood there, using one of three stock responses to answer questions about his poor performance. "I didn't hear . . . ,"

"I f o r g o t . . . , " and "I didn't see .. ." were the key to Billy's ability to avoid responsibility. He pretended to be deaf, dumb, and blind.

By the time I saw the family, eleven-year-old Billy's ex-cuses were so habitual that he was becoming impaired. He often failed to hear classroom instructions, he would rush headlong into traffic while playing catch, and he lost per-sonal items (a hat, gloves, a tennis racket) through sheer forgetfulness.

Mom and Dad Winters were exasperated with their son's deaf-dumb-and-blind routine. They had tried every way they could think of to break Billy of his bad habits. They even went to dangerous extremes in their efforts to get his attention. But nothing worked. My view of the reason for their failure is that they tried to talk Billy into being re-sponsible.

IRRESPONSIBILITY 57