I tilt the kids a bit heavily towards Lisa Simpson syndrome sometimes but having a nine year old talk about visiting a child psychologist feels like a delicate balance of terminology and word choice vs properly conveying things.
Being sorry is actually being remorseful or what have you. Say that you’re sorry is just saying the words it doesn’t mean that you mean it, goodness knows I’ve been forced to say it a lot and I wasn’t.
*Sigh*
Damn it.
Sorry. It’s just–I’ve sorta been in Truck’s shoes; I had counseling for behavior problems when I was younger. And to me, this feels like Prof. Trunchbull is still trying to bury the problem, in a way, or go for Instant Solutions. A kid does not snap out of ingrained attitudes after a single session with a psychiatrist or psychologist. It takes work, and TIME. Having him go to apologize to Selkie first, rather than after he and his parents have had some time and counseling together, is like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. It may make everyone feel better, but this can’t be all of the solution. –Just IMO.
And Truck hasn’t actually said “I’m sorry” or shown any empathy toward her.
That last panel is not what I’d call a good sign. Hints of denial and him backpedaling. He’s not ready to say ‘I screwed up, I shouldn’t have done it’.
No, one or more bad incidents don’t make him a bad person, but refusing to own up to his faults…
Okay. Shutting up now.
That’s a great point. I wonder if this counseling is just for Truck or the whole family? It might be too much to get the boy’s father to admit that all of them need it, not just Truck.
One thing I know for sure… if you treat a child like a freak, they will act like a freak. Something tells me his father has gone from blind, loving, trust to the other end of the spectrum in dealing with Truck. Truck’s father is very good at dealing in absolutes, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for middle ground with him.
Early days yet. I suspect they’re having him apologize now less to avoid further counseling and to go ‘okay now everything’s fixed’ and more because, like it or not, unless they pull Truck out of school for a long time or get the school to move Truck to another classroom etc (more on this in a minute), he is going to have to be able to cope with Selkie on a daily basis.
Moving Truck to another school/another class/homeschooling takes time, resources, and maybe more importantly, administrative good will that because of the previous incidents, the Trunchbulls no longer HAVE; these shenanigans have burned through a lot of that. And adults tend to forget that when this stuff happens among kids, apologies don’t work the same way as they do for adults (or are supposed to); among adults, it’s a recognition that like it or not, there is a task or shared space or other situation where it’s better to at least on the surface let go of past disagreements or conflicts in order to make progress – at least, in theory. For kids, that kind of understanding is harder to arrive at, as we’re seeing from the struggles on the parts of ALL of the kids. They are going ‘yeah, no, this is bull’ because they recognize that what happened still in no way suddenly didn’t happen; and the polite fictions that get spun for adults to get stuff done don’t have the same weight or meaning for them.
I agree that counseling for the family as well as for Truck individually would be a good idea, and I agree that it’s too early for Truck to really be in a position to make that kind of progress this fast. I just would say based on what little we know, I can’t agree that Prof. Trunchbull is /necessarily/ trying to bury things – we know he considers his son’s education important. I think it’s possible he’s just trying to patch things enough that things can limp along – hopefully while his son, and he and his wife and son together, get the help they need. (And I didn’t think I’d end up defending this family, I have to say!)
I’m more worried about Truck’s “he said it like it’s a really bad thing” comment. Seems as though he agrees that he “didn’t think other kids are as big a deal as” he is but doesn’t agree that that thinking is wrong.
Of course, his father has shown similar tendencies.
At the same time, though, the first step to dealing with a problem is realizing there IS one. The psych visit definitely established that for Truck, given his behavior now.
I knew a girl who was a diagnosed narcissist. She was very aware that other people considered this to be a very bad thing. It hurt her feelings very much that other people might not like her because of it, and that they *didn’t* immediately assume she was more important or valuable to the world than everyone else.
She had a very difficult time coping with the fact that other people could beat her in academics or sports or have more friends. Her parents’ response was to home school her through middle school and high school so she had no academic competition. They put her in obscure sports where she never had to compete against anyone her own age, just adults so she could always rationalize defeat and celebrate winning that much more. Her parents felt that if it made their child happy, it couldn’t possibly be the wrong decision.
I ran into this girl again in college, she had multiple mental breakdowns. She couldn’t cope with knowing anyone personally who was prettier, achieved more, dated more people, or married someone she wanted. If someone met ANY of those criteria, she couldn’t cope. She ended up being committed after a little while.
I think *that* would be the worst thing that could happen to Truck. Having to say he was sorry now (putting a bandaid on it now), and then again later on when he has made enough progress to mean it is probably a good thing.
I’ve never heard of a child psychologist that didn’t include the parents in the counseling. Counseling and therapy might take a long time and will probably require repetition as Truck hits various developmental stages. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t start making reparations now, just that this is the beginning, not the end of it.
Well, the “indicators” I noticed were (a) that it was his dad’s friend, and (b) that he was told to apologize without any useful understanding of WHY he needs to apologize.
To me that indicates a less than professional setup, which means that he might not be getting what he needs.
Nothing I said indicated that there won’t be more sessions either, I’m just dubious about the quality of said sessions.
Having him go apologize without knowing why after “just the first talk” doesn’t seem like a good sign.
“Well, the “indicators” I noticed were (a) that it was his dad’s friend, and (b) that he was told to apologize without any useful understanding of WHY he needs to apologize.”
Yeah but Truck’s a kid. You start with making them act the way they should act (“Say please”) so that they at least develop good habits even if they don’t understand.
Everything has levels of understanding. Let’s say, for example, you tried to teach a kid about the word please by starting here instead of telling them to “just say please”. You would have to look up words like “etymology” and explain the cultural significance of “nigga”, and in the end you would give up and tell them “just say please when asking for things” and trust that they would figure it out for themselves.
So the first step in getting truck to understand why he should apologize is telling Truck to apologize, regardless of understanding why.
That may be how some parents raise their kids – it seems unlikely that it would be the recommendation of a competent childhood psychologist, though maybe somebody can correct me on that.
Does he have super sensitive ears or something? I’m really curious about that. Anyways, he’s definitely not a bad kid, just misunderstood and confused. Now the poor kid thinks he’s crazy. He seems like he wants to truly apologize, but doesn’t understand why. He still thinks he was only defending himself somehow. Hopefully he gets better soon.
Also hopefully Selkie understands this and doesn’t pull a douchebag move and taunts him about being crazy or how he’s getting what he deserves. That would be pretty low or her when she said she’d be kind.
On the Autism-spectrum thing (which includes what laypeople would call ADD, ADHD and so on as well as the more debilitating forms of autism), sound-sensitivity is a common symptom. One of my symptoms used to be sound sensitivity. While Truck isn’t nearly as autistic as I had theorized(not enough to account for most of his behavioral issues), Selkie’s shriek is a super-human blast designed for underwater use, and could well be genuinely disturbing to humans in general.
If Truck is even a little autistic and has sound-sensitivity issues, then all behavioral problems aside, I can completely sympathize with the NEED TO STOP THE AWFUL NOISE NOW. Because when it’s like that, loud sounds that “normal” brains interpret as annoying, noise-sensitive brains interpret as something like pain or even vertigo.
I was about to bring that up, myself. Both my husband and my son are especially sensitive to sound, and my son has been diagnosed with both ADHD and sensory processing disorder. My husband develops vertigo and nausea if exposed to excessive noise levels and piercing high-pitched noises can literally knock him off his feet. It may be that Truck suffers from something similar, and his reaction was less an act of cruelty, and more a primal urge to make the noise stop.
Not just the autism spectrum leaves a person sensitive to that. There’s also migraine issues. They can show up in kids that young, and migraines can be set off by loud noises. Plus, when a migraine is on the way but the pain hasn’t shown up yet, sound and light can be disproportionally OWIE. As in, as someone with migraines and ADD, I’ve hissed and thrown up my arm like I was in a vampire movie when stepping outside and the sun was doing it’s normal thing.
Actually, ADHD (ADD isn’t considered a valid term anymore) has nothing to do with Autistic Spectrum disorders. I have both ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome (while not medically distinguished anymore, I still identify with the term). I can vouch for the sound-sensitivity. Even some quiet noises like that of pencil on paper hurt my ears, though on the other hand I’ll listen to fairly loud music on my computer with head phones, so… In the pencil case, earplugs block it and when I don’t have those, I tend to make a sort of hissing noise that counteracts it.
You don’t have to have sensitive ears to have your ears hurt by a loud, piercing shriek. It’s happened to me before (and is actually probably part of the reason that I have sensitive ears now).
Disease can result in sound sensitivity as well. A series of ear infections when I was a baby ending in chicken pox that nearly killed me when I was one ended with me with tubes in my ears. I can’t handle really loud noises. Mariah Carrey is my least favorite singer because even if she doesn’t hurt me physically, that loud cawing she does for the hell of it hurts me mentally. With him describing it in these terms, I’m starting to sympathize with him more. I understand what he’s saying.
As for him backpedling like some people have accused him, it comes off to me more as him explaining his actions and the reasoning at the time. Which can be incredibly helpful to a genuine apology.
I’m going out on a limb here, but it could be he has some form of Autism.
I was diagnosed with it two years ago, at age 31, Aspergers Syndrome to be exact, had it all my life, and once the diagnosis was made it explained so much about me.
And I’ve been in therapy too to cope with it, to recognize it’s pitfalls, avoid them, walk away from them, etc.
Truck seems to be show some hallmarks of it, introverted, problems with socializing, trouble reading the emotions, facial expression, and body language of others, empathizing with others, severe discomfort to loud noises.
Now everyone with Autism has some form of social handicap, most have trouble making and maintaining relationships.
A lot are also are very withdrawn into themselves, especially among strangers and in crowds.
On the other hand you have people who start talking up a storm about how their day was, or their interests to complete strangers who do not care, and they won’t pick up the subtle cues these people are giving that they’re not interested. (trouble reading body language and facial expressions)
Some people call autistic people selfish, which is not true, but can be interpreted as such, our way of thinking is radically different from people without autism, it’s very rigid, we cannot cope well with sudden change, so we tend to steer our own course, and think about the very limited amount of things we’re interested in, anything outside of that, other peoples interests, their problems, their issues with what we are doing, just get ignored, not because we want to, but our brains just deem it non essential to us and ignore that.
The biggest problem relating to what other people see as selfishness is that we cannot empathize at all, especially with strangers, until we’ve been into the exact same situation ourselves, or been taught by therapists that most people don’t think as we do, and we need to look at a situation carefully before doing anything.
Best way to put it is to say we are very Self Centered, not Selfish.
Now if something doesn’t go according to plan we made, our own mental schedule is messed up because of something happening, we can react in different ways, I know from myself that can panic, but usually I get really pissed, and sometimes blow up with rage and yelling, I don’t get physically aggressive, but I can get really really angry over what most people consider completely trivial.
That’s the rigid thinking we have, we try to account for problems, but those are the problems we expect, and most of the time something else happens and we don’t know what to do then.
So ya I think Truck might be Autistic, maybe even have Aspergers Syndrome, but for that I’d need to know his interests, and IQ level, because people with Aspergers (or Aspies as we call ourselves) always have Superior (IQ 120-129) to Very Superior/Gifted (IQ 130+) level intelligence.
Anything below that are other forms of autism.
I forgot to add the small bit about sound, which is important to what Truck says here.
It is a well know fact that most if not nearly all people with autism have a hyper sensitivity to loud sounds, and sometimes certain sounds in particular at any volume.
Especially in when they are young (cause you are born with Autism) they tend to flee away from the loud and/or discomforting noise, but this part of the base human response to what is considered a threat, the so called “Fight or Flight” reaction, and yes, in rare cases the device or person creating the sound is attacked to “make the sound stop”.
Personally I hate going to movie theaters, because two of my problems are there, lots of strangers, which makes me uncomfortable, and very loud movie sounds which adds to the uncomfortable situation even more.
I also tend to play videogames late at night, and because both inside the house and outside becomes quieter as the night progresses, I tend to slowly lower the volume on my game, because it quickly feels too loud to my ears compared to the rest of the surroundings.
The possibility of Truck being on the autism spectrum has been discussed a lot in the comments, but from all we’ve seen of him so far indicates that he willfully lied about his behaviour to his parents to get away with it, and that doesn’t fit the “unaware he’s being selfish”. He might’ve thought that pushing others around wasn’t a big deal because that’s what he picked up from his dad, not because he genuinely couldn’t fathom the other kids might have hurt feelings.
What he does seem to still be confused with, is “why might doesn’t make right”, but that’s what the shrink visits are for. I hope they make his dad attend them too.
It seems that I’m an Aspie, though it wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood.
There’s a very specific sound — the squeaking of styrofoam against itself — that has always set my teeth on edge. It hadn’t occurred to me that this could also have been related to the condition.
Could be, although a lot of people have reactions like that to specific sounds – fingernails on chalkboards is a famous one, the squeaking that balloons makes is another. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s all the Styrofoam thing is for you.
In the last panel, it looks like Selkie’s starting to see him as a person with feelings of his own, rather than a nightmare. A person who’s not all the way there to figuring out why what he did was wrong, to be sure… but he’s scared, and he’s trying. He’s a person that she could be kind to.
Pumpkincat makes a good point, above. An apology isn’t going to magically make everything didn’t-happen. It never does, but adults often agree to pretend that it does, for the sake of smoothing things over — and for complicated dissonance-resolution reasons, that pretense itself can do a lot to make people begin to feel that the conflict is indeed over. But few eight and nine year olds have learned how to do that.
I am looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
I love the way this series has no bad guys. Not yet, anyway, and possibly not ever.
Every single negative character I can recall has been brought around in one way or another over time. I’m expecting even the dad’s ex-wife (ex-girlfriend?) will come around. You’ve got Truck just starting to (wanting to be good or at least non-bad, and realizing that your behavior does not match your aspirations, is a good first step!), Heather bonding with Selkie over soccer, the kids here apologizing and trying to figure out a way to work it out (even if the adults are pushing them into it earlier than they normally would’ve done it on their own)….
Think the principal will ultimately join the ranks of the redeemed here? Because I’d hate to see the streak get broken. It’s too easy to write bad guys off as a totally different class of people that we don’t have to care about. It’s much more interesting to write them like this, like normal humans with complex motives and occasionally confusing worldviews that need to get broken and remade.
Yes, but I can count on one hand the number of stories I’ve read where there were antagonists but no villains. (Not counting stories where the main characters are villains or thieves and the antagonists are good guys. There’s plenty of those around.)
Though I should also point out that it is possible for the antagonist to be something other than a person. For example, a natural disaster or big storm.
Also, there’s this drive nowadays to have antagonism in every single part of a story, and I think that’s detrimental to certain stories, particularly adaptations. Part of the Narnia movies involved antagonism between good guys that didn’t have to be there (and spoiled the characterization of at least one major character), and I felt betrayed by one adaptation of Little Men in which my favorite scene – wherein the black sheep of the family-like boarding school gets brought back in through repentance, and the dad upon hearing it says “That shows we have a hold on his heart; I would no more turn him away now than I would my own son,” but in the adaptation the dad’s like “Yup, we’ll send him away first thing tomorrow morning” just because they HAD to have conflict there. Grrrrr.
People lie to themselves a lot. We can even re-make memories! I was once Ina relationship with a person who lied a lot, most of all to themselves. It ended very painfully, and to me, in a very confused manner. But despite the lies this person told, and the outright cruelty they sometimes exhibited, they still believed themselves to be kind.
I do believe they wanted to be kind, but I do not have the energy to stick around and get hurt like that repeatedly. If ever they want to acknowledge the hurt they caused/are causing, I’ll be happy to help them. But I’m not stronge enough to stick around till that happens.
The thing is, though, young kids *are* self-important. A big chunk of the growing-up process is learning to see outside of yourself and your own wants/needs. So, the question is, is Truck simply typical for his age, slow to develop empathy, or a full psychopath? (Or is it sociopath? I get those two mixed up). Based on the evidence, I’m inclined to think the second; but if it is the third, then he may have an actual neurological disorder and be doomed to a life as a lawyer or politician. =( (Or serial killer, but I choose to be optimistic and, anyway, he at least seems concerned about things, which is a good sign.)
Jeez, I’ve never met a kid like this. Usually if they’re out of touch enough to be sociopathic they’re not remotely self-aware enough to consider whether they might not be the only person in the world, or wory about being crazy. Especially at that age. Good for him!
I read a series of articles by a guy who recovered from a psychotic break. He said one of the few things that seemed to really help was his father’s refusal to play along with his delusions and bluntly tell him to his face that what he was saying was “crazy”. It obviously wouldn’t work for everyone (not everyone has that good a relationship with their parents, for one thing), but for him it was one of the few ways to tell the difference between his psychotic delusions and reality. Because, being psychotic at the time, he honestly hopped from delusion to delusion without any way to “ground” his thinking in what we would take for granted is “reasonable”. But his father being blunt and refusing to play along helped him realize that he needed help, even though he still had delusions of godhood for a while before he got better.
Here’s my concern(s)
1. If all he really wanted was to stop Selkie from shrieking, once she stopped (which was when he picked her up), he wouldn’t have antagonized her further. The most he would have done is put her down and maybe hit or slap her once or twice. No, he continued on to shake her violently and yell at her about “you gotta do what I say”. This suggests to me some additional issues. Anger? Narcissism? Parroting his father’s/the wresters’ “might makes right” behavior? Whatever it is, his reaction was outside normal parameters, even for a kid. This was BULLYING. Bullies often have underlying psych or home problems fueling their behavior, yes; and it is unfair to wholesale classify people as good or bad by their actions, true. But Tommy went WAY overboard and WAY harmful for just wanting the shrieking to stop.
2. Wow, the Prof took him to a psychologist. On the one hand, that may be necessary given the potential for Tommy’s behavior to be deeply-rooted at this point. On the other hand, it *does not* sound like this is a good therapist. A bad therapist can actually do more harm than not having one. If the therapist was a friend of daddy’s, and daddy already has elitism (due to species, i.e. Selkie, and class/profession, i.e. his insisting on being called “Professor”) issues, who’s to say that Mr. Therapist doesn’t also have elitism issues? The only way I can see this ending well is if Therapist-sama does an appropriate intervention on Daddy’s behavior. I personally see most of Tommy’s behavior as trying to be just like Daddy; Tommy has hinted as much himself.
3. As other have previously mentioned, Tommy seems to have been shamed into doing this; he is not acting out of genuine guilt, but out of fear and shame. Never a good way to get kids to do things!!! It often leads to them having deep-seated complexes! (See: Elsa of Frozen – her powers were treated as something to be ashamed or afraid of, hence the entire movie plot.) And apart from that, it’s definitely not teaching Tommy how to be good or caring towards others. The potential future lesson he’s currently drawing from the psychologist visit is that he has to hide how bad he is. If shame is the driving force here, the standard response for most people is to conceal it. Tommy’s already been doing the lying/masking thing to his parents; this could only drive him to do it more.
4. There is a potential implication of the Professor’s taking Tommy to a psychologist as his trying to pass off the problem, or not deal with it himself like a good parent. I can understand that the Professor is probably shaken after realizing the truth about his son and the whole situation, and probably emotionally frazzled; but no one ever said parenting was easy, and if you want to raise a healthy, whole kid, you *are allowed* to take a break from time to time, but NEVER are you allowed to just pass the problem off to someone else.
There’s basically a whole lot of things wrong with Tommy’s reaction and with his father’s approach to everything since the reveal. There’s a lot more, but those are the biggest points for me.
… Holy moly, I’m getting this invested in *fictional* characters… good writing Dave!!
i don’t think that his dad ever took him to a child psychologist. i think it’s exactly as Truck says it is “one of his FRIENDS” (that just happens to BE “A” psychologist, and “made me talk to him LAST NIGHT” (emphasis mine)… what kind of legit doctor makes house calls concerning mental health issues, AND at NIGHT?… no.. i think his dad called a buddy over to “have a talk with him” and then walked out of the room, i seriously doubt that this buddy was even a CHILD psychologist at all… i am also pretty sure that this is all under-the-table as it would EMBARRASS “Professor” Trunchbull too much to let it be known outside his close circle of friends/family that his kid has enough problems that the only way to fix them was to bring him to a psychologist… nope, as far as his dad actually manning-up and bringing his kid in for a psych-eval just doesn’t fit with the personality that we’ve seen of him so far, but i am willing to be disproved as i don’t want to wish evil things on others… much…
My little sister has OCD. When she was about 3 1/2 she started seeing a child psychiatrist for it (you *know* something’s wrong when a kid that young scrubs her hands raw and can’t sleep until a ritual is complete). Going to meet the doctor, we phrased it as going to meet a friend of ours to avoid scaring her.
The appointment was scheduled after I got out of school and after my parents got out of work so the entire family could be there. If my little sister had been asked to describe the experience, she probably would have said we went to play games with one of our parents’ friends last night and that she colored some pictures while the adults talked. Truck’s description seemed pretty normal to me.
Yes, of course he could be autistic or have aspergers or just be a sociopath. But Gordon’s Knot tells us that the answer with the least assumptions should be taken as correct until a better answer comes along.
Truck was raised by a clearly self-important and aggressive man who was willfully ignorant of his misdoing and was not above blackmailing people into submission. Children grow up to be like their fathers. Truck learned the aggression and self-importance, but he never learned when not to use it.
Because there are times to be aggressive. When you feel you’re being threatened, or when you feel someone is lying about your child to get him in trouble. But Truck’s father doesn’t seem to have ever made that distinction. Maybe he didn’t realize what he was teaching his son.
If, in front of your kid, you always greet people with a smile and a handshake, that is how your kid will greet people. If the only time your kid sees you greet people is when you’re pissed off and screaming at them, *that is what he will emulate*. I get the feeling that the only time his father gave him the time of day was when he was in trouble and his father needed to yell at someone.
So what’s the difference between being sorry and saying you’re sorry?
The realization that your actions could label you as “crazy” – and not good crazy, either.
Being sorry is actually being remorseful or what have you. Say that you’re sorry is just saying the words it doesn’t mean that you mean it, goodness knows I’ve been forced to say it a lot and I wasn’t.
*Sigh*
Damn it.
Sorry. It’s just–I’ve sorta been in Truck’s shoes; I had counseling for behavior problems when I was younger. And to me, this feels like Prof. Trunchbull is still trying to bury the problem, in a way, or go for Instant Solutions. A kid does not snap out of ingrained attitudes after a single session with a psychiatrist or psychologist. It takes work, and TIME. Having him go to apologize to Selkie first, rather than after he and his parents have had some time and counseling together, is like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. It may make everyone feel better, but this can’t be all of the solution. –Just IMO.
And Truck hasn’t actually said “I’m sorry” or shown any empathy toward her.
That last panel is not what I’d call a good sign. Hints of denial and him backpedaling. He’s not ready to say ‘I screwed up, I shouldn’t have done it’.
No, one or more bad incidents don’t make him a bad person, but refusing to own up to his faults…
Okay. Shutting up now.
That’s a great point. I wonder if this counseling is just for Truck or the whole family? It might be too much to get the boy’s father to admit that all of them need it, not just Truck.
One thing I know for sure… if you treat a child like a freak, they will act like a freak. Something tells me his father has gone from blind, loving, trust to the other end of the spectrum in dealing with Truck. Truck’s father is very good at dealing in absolutes, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for middle ground with him.
Early days yet. I suspect they’re having him apologize now less to avoid further counseling and to go ‘okay now everything’s fixed’ and more because, like it or not, unless they pull Truck out of school for a long time or get the school to move Truck to another classroom etc (more on this in a minute), he is going to have to be able to cope with Selkie on a daily basis.
Moving Truck to another school/another class/homeschooling takes time, resources, and maybe more importantly, administrative good will that because of the previous incidents, the Trunchbulls no longer HAVE; these shenanigans have burned through a lot of that. And adults tend to forget that when this stuff happens among kids, apologies don’t work the same way as they do for adults (or are supposed to); among adults, it’s a recognition that like it or not, there is a task or shared space or other situation where it’s better to at least on the surface let go of past disagreements or conflicts in order to make progress – at least, in theory. For kids, that kind of understanding is harder to arrive at, as we’re seeing from the struggles on the parts of ALL of the kids. They are going ‘yeah, no, this is bull’ because they recognize that what happened still in no way suddenly didn’t happen; and the polite fictions that get spun for adults to get stuff done don’t have the same weight or meaning for them.
I agree that counseling for the family as well as for Truck individually would be a good idea, and I agree that it’s too early for Truck to really be in a position to make that kind of progress this fast. I just would say based on what little we know, I can’t agree that Prof. Trunchbull is /necessarily/ trying to bury things – we know he considers his son’s education important. I think it’s possible he’s just trying to patch things enough that things can limp along – hopefully while his son, and he and his wife and son together, get the help they need. (And I didn’t think I’d end up defending this family, I have to say!)
I’m pretty sure Truck and Selkie are already in different classrooms, so I’m not sure what would be gained by moving him.
I’m more worried about Truck’s “he said it like it’s a really bad thing” comment. Seems as though he agrees that he “didn’t think other kids are as big a deal as” he is but doesn’t agree that that thinking is wrong.
Of course, his father has shown similar tendencies.
It’s more like “I had no idea it was a really bad thing and it’s made me the bad guy”.
At the same time, though, the first step to dealing with a problem is realizing there IS one. The psych visit definitely established that for Truck, given his behavior now.
I knew a girl who was a diagnosed narcissist. She was very aware that other people considered this to be a very bad thing. It hurt her feelings very much that other people might not like her because of it, and that they *didn’t* immediately assume she was more important or valuable to the world than everyone else.
She had a very difficult time coping with the fact that other people could beat her in academics or sports or have more friends. Her parents’ response was to home school her through middle school and high school so she had no academic competition. They put her in obscure sports where she never had to compete against anyone her own age, just adults so she could always rationalize defeat and celebrate winning that much more. Her parents felt that if it made their child happy, it couldn’t possibly be the wrong decision.
I ran into this girl again in college, she had multiple mental breakdowns. She couldn’t cope with knowing anyone personally who was prettier, achieved more, dated more people, or married someone she wanted. If someone met ANY of those criteria, she couldn’t cope. She ended up being committed after a little while.
I think *that* would be the worst thing that could happen to Truck. Having to say he was sorry now (putting a bandaid on it now), and then again later on when he has made enough progress to mean it is probably a good thing.
I’ve never heard of a child psychologist that didn’t include the parents in the counseling. Counseling and therapy might take a long time and will probably require repetition as Truck hits various developmental stages. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t start making reparations now, just that this is the beginning, not the end of it.
Glad he’s getting help early instead of getting in serious trouble later.
Aw, I think he’s learning. In time he’ll be all right.
Also, go Selkie for being kind without losing her (entirely reasonable) distrust!
Honestly, it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t really get it right now, even if he wants to.
I feel like it’s a bit odd to have him “apologize” when he’s this confused about WHY he’s doing it.
Sounds like maybe he’s not actually getting treatment, so much as one of his dad’s friends had a chat with him. I hope he gets better care than that.
There’s nothing to indicate that he won’t be getting more sessions. This was just the first talk.
Well, the “indicators” I noticed were (a) that it was his dad’s friend, and (b) that he was told to apologize without any useful understanding of WHY he needs to apologize.
To me that indicates a less than professional setup, which means that he might not be getting what he needs.
Nothing I said indicated that there won’t be more sessions either, I’m just dubious about the quality of said sessions.
Having him go apologize without knowing why after “just the first talk” doesn’t seem like a good sign.
“Well, the “indicators” I noticed were (a) that it was his dad’s friend, and (b) that he was told to apologize without any useful understanding of WHY he needs to apologize.”
Yeah but Truck’s a kid. You start with making them act the way they should act (“Say please”) so that they at least develop good habits even if they don’t understand.
Everything has levels of understanding. Let’s say, for example, you tried to teach a kid about the word please by starting here instead of telling them to “just say please”. You would have to look up words like “etymology” and explain the cultural significance of “nigga”, and in the end you would give up and tell them “just say please when asking for things” and trust that they would figure it out for themselves.
So the first step in getting truck to understand why he should apologize is telling Truck to apologize, regardless of understanding why.
That may be how some parents raise their kids – it seems unlikely that it would be the recommendation of a competent childhood psychologist, though maybe somebody can correct me on that.
Does he have super sensitive ears or something? I’m really curious about that. Anyways, he’s definitely not a bad kid, just misunderstood and confused. Now the poor kid thinks he’s crazy. He seems like he wants to truly apologize, but doesn’t understand why. He still thinks he was only defending himself somehow. Hopefully he gets better soon.
Also hopefully Selkie understands this and doesn’t pull a douchebag move and taunts him about being crazy or how he’s getting what he deserves. That would be pretty low or her when she said she’d be kind.
On the Autism-spectrum thing (which includes what laypeople would call ADD, ADHD and so on as well as the more debilitating forms of autism), sound-sensitivity is a common symptom. One of my symptoms used to be sound sensitivity. While Truck isn’t nearly as autistic as I had theorized(not enough to account for most of his behavioral issues), Selkie’s shriek is a super-human blast designed for underwater use, and could well be genuinely disturbing to humans in general.
If Truck is even a little autistic and has sound-sensitivity issues, then all behavioral problems aside, I can completely sympathize with the NEED TO STOP THE AWFUL NOISE NOW. Because when it’s like that, loud sounds that “normal” brains interpret as annoying, noise-sensitive brains interpret as something like pain or even vertigo.
I was about to bring that up, myself. Both my husband and my son are especially sensitive to sound, and my son has been diagnosed with both ADHD and sensory processing disorder. My husband develops vertigo and nausea if exposed to excessive noise levels and piercing high-pitched noises can literally knock him off his feet. It may be that Truck suffers from something similar, and his reaction was less an act of cruelty, and more a primal urge to make the noise stop.
Not just the autism spectrum leaves a person sensitive to that. There’s also migraine issues. They can show up in kids that young, and migraines can be set off by loud noises. Plus, when a migraine is on the way but the pain hasn’t shown up yet, sound and light can be disproportionally OWIE. As in, as someone with migraines and ADD, I’ve hissed and thrown up my arm like I was in a vampire movie when stepping outside and the sun was doing it’s normal thing.
So I totally get his noise thing.
Actually, ADHD (ADD isn’t considered a valid term anymore) has nothing to do with Autistic Spectrum disorders. I have both ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome (while not medically distinguished anymore, I still identify with the term). I can vouch for the sound-sensitivity. Even some quiet noises like that of pencil on paper hurt my ears, though on the other hand I’ll listen to fairly loud music on my computer with head phones, so… In the pencil case, earplugs block it and when I don’t have those, I tend to make a sort of hissing noise that counteracts it.
You don’t have to have sensitive ears to have your ears hurt by a loud, piercing shriek. It’s happened to me before (and is actually probably part of the reason that I have sensitive ears now).
Disease can result in sound sensitivity as well. A series of ear infections when I was a baby ending in chicken pox that nearly killed me when I was one ended with me with tubes in my ears. I can’t handle really loud noises. Mariah Carrey is my least favorite singer because even if she doesn’t hurt me physically, that loud cawing she does for the hell of it hurts me mentally. With him describing it in these terms, I’m starting to sympathize with him more. I understand what he’s saying.
As for him backpedling like some people have accused him, it comes off to me more as him explaining his actions and the reasoning at the time. Which can be incredibly helpful to a genuine apology.
I’m going out on a limb here, but it could be he has some form of Autism.
I was diagnosed with it two years ago, at age 31, Aspergers Syndrome to be exact, had it all my life, and once the diagnosis was made it explained so much about me.
And I’ve been in therapy too to cope with it, to recognize it’s pitfalls, avoid them, walk away from them, etc.
Truck seems to be show some hallmarks of it, introverted, problems with socializing, trouble reading the emotions, facial expression, and body language of others, empathizing with others, severe discomfort to loud noises.
Now everyone with Autism has some form of social handicap, most have trouble making and maintaining relationships.
A lot are also are very withdrawn into themselves, especially among strangers and in crowds.
On the other hand you have people who start talking up a storm about how their day was, or their interests to complete strangers who do not care, and they won’t pick up the subtle cues these people are giving that they’re not interested. (trouble reading body language and facial expressions)
Some people call autistic people selfish, which is not true, but can be interpreted as such, our way of thinking is radically different from people without autism, it’s very rigid, we cannot cope well with sudden change, so we tend to steer our own course, and think about the very limited amount of things we’re interested in, anything outside of that, other peoples interests, their problems, their issues with what we are doing, just get ignored, not because we want to, but our brains just deem it non essential to us and ignore that.
The biggest problem relating to what other people see as selfishness is that we cannot empathize at all, especially with strangers, until we’ve been into the exact same situation ourselves, or been taught by therapists that most people don’t think as we do, and we need to look at a situation carefully before doing anything.
Best way to put it is to say we are very Self Centered, not Selfish.
Now if something doesn’t go according to plan we made, our own mental schedule is messed up because of something happening, we can react in different ways, I know from myself that can panic, but usually I get really pissed, and sometimes blow up with rage and yelling, I don’t get physically aggressive, but I can get really really angry over what most people consider completely trivial.
That’s the rigid thinking we have, we try to account for problems, but those are the problems we expect, and most of the time something else happens and we don’t know what to do then.
So ya I think Truck might be Autistic, maybe even have Aspergers Syndrome, but for that I’d need to know his interests, and IQ level, because people with Aspergers (or Aspies as we call ourselves) always have Superior (IQ 120-129) to Very Superior/Gifted (IQ 130+) level intelligence.
Anything below that are other forms of autism.
I forgot to add the small bit about sound, which is important to what Truck says here.
It is a well know fact that most if not nearly all people with autism have a hyper sensitivity to loud sounds, and sometimes certain sounds in particular at any volume.
Especially in when they are young (cause you are born with Autism) they tend to flee away from the loud and/or discomforting noise, but this part of the base human response to what is considered a threat, the so called “Fight or Flight” reaction, and yes, in rare cases the device or person creating the sound is attacked to “make the sound stop”.
Personally I hate going to movie theaters, because two of my problems are there, lots of strangers, which makes me uncomfortable, and very loud movie sounds which adds to the uncomfortable situation even more.
I also tend to play videogames late at night, and because both inside the house and outside becomes quieter as the night progresses, I tend to slowly lower the volume on my game, because it quickly feels too loud to my ears compared to the rest of the surroundings.
The possibility of Truck being on the autism spectrum has been discussed a lot in the comments, but from all we’ve seen of him so far indicates that he willfully lied about his behaviour to his parents to get away with it, and that doesn’t fit the “unaware he’s being selfish”. He might’ve thought that pushing others around wasn’t a big deal because that’s what he picked up from his dad, not because he genuinely couldn’t fathom the other kids might have hurt feelings.
What he does seem to still be confused with, is “why might doesn’t make right”, but that’s what the shrink visits are for. I hope they make his dad attend them too.
It seems that I’m an Aspie, though it wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood.
There’s a very specific sound — the squeaking of styrofoam against itself — that has always set my teeth on edge. It hadn’t occurred to me that this could also have been related to the condition.
Could be, although a lot of people have reactions like that to specific sounds – fingernails on chalkboards is a famous one, the squeaking that balloons makes is another. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s all the Styrofoam thing is for you.
In the last panel, it looks like Selkie’s starting to see him as a person with feelings of his own, rather than a nightmare. A person who’s not all the way there to figuring out why what he did was wrong, to be sure… but he’s scared, and he’s trying. He’s a person that she could be kind to.
Pumpkincat makes a good point, above. An apology isn’t going to magically make everything didn’t-happen. It never does, but adults often agree to pretend that it does, for the sake of smoothing things over — and for complicated dissonance-resolution reasons, that pretense itself can do a lot to make people begin to feel that the conflict is indeed over. But few eight and nine year olds have learned how to do that.
I am looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
I love the way this series has no bad guys. Not yet, anyway, and possibly not ever.
Every single negative character I can recall has been brought around in one way or another over time. I’m expecting even the dad’s ex-wife (ex-girlfriend?) will come around. You’ve got Truck just starting to (wanting to be good or at least non-bad, and realizing that your behavior does not match your aspirations, is a good first step!), Heather bonding with Selkie over soccer, the kids here apologizing and trying to figure out a way to work it out (even if the adults are pushing them into it earlier than they normally would’ve done it on their own)….
Think the principal will ultimately join the ranks of the redeemed here? Because I’d hate to see the streak get broken. It’s too easy to write bad guys off as a totally different class of people that we don’t have to care about. It’s much more interesting to write them like this, like normal humans with complex motives and occasionally confusing worldviews that need to get broken and remade.
Antagonists don’t have to be villains. You need some kind of antagonist to have a story, but you don’t need a villain.
Yes, but I can count on one hand the number of stories I’ve read where there were antagonists but no villains. (Not counting stories where the main characters are villains or thieves and the antagonists are good guys. There’s plenty of those around.)
Though I should also point out that it is possible for the antagonist to be something other than a person. For example, a natural disaster or big storm.
Also, there’s this drive nowadays to have antagonism in every single part of a story, and I think that’s detrimental to certain stories, particularly adaptations. Part of the Narnia movies involved antagonism between good guys that didn’t have to be there (and spoiled the characterization of at least one major character), and I felt betrayed by one adaptation of Little Men in which my favorite scene – wherein the black sheep of the family-like boarding school gets brought back in through repentance, and the dad upon hearing it says “That shows we have a hold on his heart; I would no more turn him away now than I would my own son,” but in the adaptation the dad’s like “Yup, we’ll send him away first thing tomorrow morning” just because they HAD to have conflict there. Grrrrr.
Personal story time!
People lie to themselves a lot. We can even re-make memories! I was once Ina relationship with a person who lied a lot, most of all to themselves. It ended very painfully, and to me, in a very confused manner. But despite the lies this person told, and the outright cruelty they sometimes exhibited, they still believed themselves to be kind.
I do believe they wanted to be kind, but I do not have the energy to stick around and get hurt like that repeatedly. If ever they want to acknowledge the hurt they caused/are causing, I’ll be happy to help them. But I’m not stronge enough to stick around till that happens.
The thing is, though, young kids *are* self-important. A big chunk of the growing-up process is learning to see outside of yourself and your own wants/needs. So, the question is, is Truck simply typical for his age, slow to develop empathy, or a full psychopath? (Or is it sociopath? I get those two mixed up). Based on the evidence, I’m inclined to think the second; but if it is the third, then he may have an actual neurological disorder and be doomed to a life as a lawyer or politician. =( (Or serial killer, but I choose to be optimistic and, anyway, he at least seems concerned about things, which is a good sign.)
Jeez, I’ve never met a kid like this. Usually if they’re out of touch enough to be sociopathic they’re not remotely self-aware enough to consider whether they might not be the only person in the world, or wory about being crazy. Especially at that age. Good for him!
always hard when you have to look insanity in the eye, and you realize it is you.
I read a series of articles by a guy who recovered from a psychotic break. He said one of the few things that seemed to really help was his father’s refusal to play along with his delusions and bluntly tell him to his face that what he was saying was “crazy”. It obviously wouldn’t work for everyone (not everyone has that good a relationship with their parents, for one thing), but for him it was one of the few ways to tell the difference between his psychotic delusions and reality. Because, being psychotic at the time, he honestly hopped from delusion to delusion without any way to “ground” his thinking in what we would take for granted is “reasonable”. But his father being blunt and refusing to play along helped him realize that he needed help, even though he still had delusions of godhood for a while before he got better.
Here’s my concern(s)
1. If all he really wanted was to stop Selkie from shrieking, once she stopped (which was when he picked her up), he wouldn’t have antagonized her further. The most he would have done is put her down and maybe hit or slap her once or twice. No, he continued on to shake her violently and yell at her about “you gotta do what I say”. This suggests to me some additional issues. Anger? Narcissism? Parroting his father’s/the wresters’ “might makes right” behavior? Whatever it is, his reaction was outside normal parameters, even for a kid. This was BULLYING. Bullies often have underlying psych or home problems fueling their behavior, yes; and it is unfair to wholesale classify people as good or bad by their actions, true. But Tommy went WAY overboard and WAY harmful for just wanting the shrieking to stop.
2. Wow, the Prof took him to a psychologist. On the one hand, that may be necessary given the potential for Tommy’s behavior to be deeply-rooted at this point. On the other hand, it *does not* sound like this is a good therapist. A bad therapist can actually do more harm than not having one. If the therapist was a friend of daddy’s, and daddy already has elitism (due to species, i.e. Selkie, and class/profession, i.e. his insisting on being called “Professor”) issues, who’s to say that Mr. Therapist doesn’t also have elitism issues? The only way I can see this ending well is if Therapist-sama does an appropriate intervention on Daddy’s behavior. I personally see most of Tommy’s behavior as trying to be just like Daddy; Tommy has hinted as much himself.
3. As other have previously mentioned, Tommy seems to have been shamed into doing this; he is not acting out of genuine guilt, but out of fear and shame. Never a good way to get kids to do things!!! It often leads to them having deep-seated complexes! (See: Elsa of Frozen – her powers were treated as something to be ashamed or afraid of, hence the entire movie plot.) And apart from that, it’s definitely not teaching Tommy how to be good or caring towards others. The potential future lesson he’s currently drawing from the psychologist visit is that he has to hide how bad he is. If shame is the driving force here, the standard response for most people is to conceal it. Tommy’s already been doing the lying/masking thing to his parents; this could only drive him to do it more.
4. There is a potential implication of the Professor’s taking Tommy to a psychologist as his trying to pass off the problem, or not deal with it himself like a good parent. I can understand that the Professor is probably shaken after realizing the truth about his son and the whole situation, and probably emotionally frazzled; but no one ever said parenting was easy, and if you want to raise a healthy, whole kid, you *are allowed* to take a break from time to time, but NEVER are you allowed to just pass the problem off to someone else.
There’s basically a whole lot of things wrong with Tommy’s reaction and with his father’s approach to everything since the reveal. There’s a lot more, but those are the biggest points for me.
… Holy moly, I’m getting this invested in *fictional* characters… good writing Dave!!
i don’t think that his dad ever took him to a child psychologist. i think it’s exactly as Truck says it is “one of his FRIENDS” (that just happens to BE “A” psychologist, and “made me talk to him LAST NIGHT” (emphasis mine)… what kind of legit doctor makes house calls concerning mental health issues, AND at NIGHT?… no.. i think his dad called a buddy over to “have a talk with him” and then walked out of the room, i seriously doubt that this buddy was even a CHILD psychologist at all… i am also pretty sure that this is all under-the-table as it would EMBARRASS “Professor” Trunchbull too much to let it be known outside his close circle of friends/family that his kid has enough problems that the only way to fix them was to bring him to a psychologist… nope, as far as his dad actually manning-up and bringing his kid in for a psych-eval just doesn’t fit with the personality that we’ve seen of him so far, but i am willing to be disproved as i don’t want to wish evil things on others… much…
My little sister has OCD. When she was about 3 1/2 she started seeing a child psychiatrist for it (you *know* something’s wrong when a kid that young scrubs her hands raw and can’t sleep until a ritual is complete). Going to meet the doctor, we phrased it as going to meet a friend of ours to avoid scaring her.
The appointment was scheduled after I got out of school and after my parents got out of work so the entire family could be there. If my little sister had been asked to describe the experience, she probably would have said we went to play games with one of our parents’ friends last night and that she colored some pictures while the adults talked. Truck’s description seemed pretty normal to me.
I think you’re all really overthinking this.
Yes, of course he could be autistic or have aspergers or just be a sociopath. But Gordon’s Knot tells us that the answer with the least assumptions should be taken as correct until a better answer comes along.
Truck was raised by a clearly self-important and aggressive man who was willfully ignorant of his misdoing and was not above blackmailing people into submission. Children grow up to be like their fathers. Truck learned the aggression and self-importance, but he never learned when not to use it.
Because there are times to be aggressive. When you feel you’re being threatened, or when you feel someone is lying about your child to get him in trouble. But Truck’s father doesn’t seem to have ever made that distinction. Maybe he didn’t realize what he was teaching his son.
If, in front of your kid, you always greet people with a smile and a handshake, that is how your kid will greet people. If the only time your kid sees you greet people is when you’re pissed off and screaming at them, *that is what he will emulate*. I get the feeling that the only time his father gave him the time of day was when he was in trouble and his father needed to yell at someone.
Um, that’s Occam’s Razor, not Gordon’s Knot. Just sayin… 🙂
Sorry Grendel, but just because you’re sensitive to noise doesn’t mean Beowulf is going to forgive you that easily.
Admitting you’re an asshole is the first step toward healing
DOO DOO DOO DOOOO-OO!!!!
You’ve developed a complex!
Got luck with that, Truck.