APD Part VI––Youth Trip Nightmare
Just when I thought I would survive junior high, my mother practically forced me to go on a weekend trip to Arkansas with other youth from our church. The girls were fine. The boys were a nightmare. Have you ever been constantly harassed with nowhere to go? No escape is possible. Imagine a six-hour bus trip with non-stop insults from stupid junior and senior high boys. Click to Tweet. #amwriting #rejection #APD
From Wikipedia:
- peer group rejection[12] are both associated with an increased risk for the development of AvPD.[14]
- Is preoccupied with being criticized or rejected in social situations
- Is inhibited in new interpersonal situations because of feelings of inadequacy
All I can remember ever wanting, was to be liked and accepted like everyone else. This particular bus trip, my mother supposed, was to help me draw closer to some of the girls at church. Yes, well, it didn’t really, except for one girl, who I learned later, had become pregnant that summer. She was nice to me, and told me how much she missed her boyfriend. Little did I know she was already pregnant.
The girls were “nice” to me, but they didn’t want to spend every moment of every day with me. So, I kept having to seek people out who would talk to me, hence the girl who was a year older than me, who was pregnant––but no one knew that yet.
I would spend some time with the adults, because they were nice to me. They’d talk to me a short time, then kind of shoo me off to spend more time with the kids. Yeah right. Not even the pastor’s daughter wanted to spend too much time with me.
It was a difficult weekend, but it would have been okay, if not for the juvenile behavior of the boys on the way home. And it seemed as if the adults didn’t hear what they were saying.
Six-hour trip––all I could do was look out the window and try not to cry all the way home. You can’t imagine, unless you’ve experienced something like that, what a nightmare in full daylight, it was. They were relentless. Insults, harassment, all the way home. It was much more than teasing. I’d learned to handle some teasing by that time––and give it back. This wasn’t teasing. This was downright ugliness. And the adults seemed to have no clue.
The whole ride home was torture. When I told my mother what happened, she felt kind of bad for making me go. What she had hoped for, did not happen. She never made me go to youth group or any of its activities, ever again. Because I wouldn’t go.
Parents, trust your children to know whether or not an extended time with others their age will be beneficial to them. If your child has rejection issues from being adopted, please don’t force them to be sociable and put themselves in a position to be hurt. Wounds of rejection will never be forgotten. Instead, allow your child to find their own friends and be an encouragement for social activity, but don’t force it. Click to Tweet. #amwriting #rejection #APD
Donna L.H. Smith 
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