The Drama Queen

Since my last writing I’ve been to a bit of an educational conference that has made me somewhat more inclined to be merciful and less critical of the drama queens in my life. Something was explained about emotional dysregulation and people acting out on very real feelings. The existence of those feelings may not make sense to outside parties. It is in this respect that the attention seeking drama queen behaviors are not necessarily as manipulative and evil as they most likely seem.

Anyway, I will still illustrate the drama queen.

This kid is one of our lowest ranking folks on the social hierarchy and was even more so when he was early on the island. Hence, he didn’t have much of a relationship at all with the other boys. One of the most popular kids was one day kicked off the island. He was a kid with a lot of close friends among the boys and the day he left a lot of people were pretty upset. However, the drama queen was new enough to the island he really hadn’t bonded with anyone yet and certainly had no special ties to the abolished child. Despite this, the most emotionally distraught individual was the drama queen who made the biggest scene in terms of how unfair it was that his super close friend was being run off the island.

A common recurring behavior of the drama queen is to display wounds that have involved bleeding. Every cut, knick, scrape that ever leaked the red liquid becomes something to show grown-ups as if the wounds should elicit a concerned response. One day the 100x magnification of this behavior could be seen when one of the other boys threw a rock and plunked the drama queen in the head. Drama queen fell to the ground under the blow and had quite a bit of bleeding from his lacerated scalp. It was a painful and disorienting wound, I’m sure. However, the hamming seemed to amp up gradually the further we got from the event. First there was the “I’m too stunned to apply pressure to my own bleeding wound.” This was followed by what I could have sworn was exaggerated sobbing. This came in conjunction with “I’m gonna kill him the next time I see him.” This is a reasonably predictable sentiment but really not plausible for this kid and seemed expressed more in acting than in true rage. All of his efforts seemed to come to fruition as a glowing pleasure emanated while the nurse cooingly cleaned and dressed his wound.

Considering the nature of his injury a concussion seemed not unlikely and it was decided that he needed to be seen by a doctor. This was on a Friday so he just took the boat back to the Cape with us. As we just started to head out the drama queen closed his eyes for a second wincing in pain when one of the other staff told him to not go to sleep because that can really complicate a concussion. Within a few seconds the drama queen leaned back as if about to nap when the staff shook him and repeated that he shouldn’t sleep. So, as the boat ride went on, the kid would make more and more fuss about pretending to sleep and getting pissed when the staff person would shake him to make sure he didn’t. He clearly relished the fact that he could get someone to respond to him every few seconds. After a while the other staff went out on the outside deck and the actress faked sleep again. I didn’t shake him awake. I just ignored him. And after the critical few seconds of “oh my gosh he’s falling asleep” wore off he gave up and stopped playing at it.

These are some of the most intense examples. The more day-to-day business from this kid is to act like he needs more help on his schoolwork than he does, throw exaggerated hissy fits over nothing, voluntarily “help” with things you really don’t want him to do, etc. But writing of this kid and considering the way these behaviors recently felt to me like someone scratching a chalkboard, I feel inclined to make a brief soapbox about how a kid gets to this point.

I mentioned in the princess post how it is understandable that so much of what is considered bad behavior from adolescents is simply a form of communication where in kids are trying like mad to get people they should have attached relationships with to acknowledge they do in fact exist and do in fact matter. Kids who might end up on the island don’t get this sort of acknowledgement. When they do it is usually in the wrong way meaning abuse. A lot of them don’t even really have attached relationships.
Sometimes people look at all the stupid, irresponsible, risky, and otherwise deviant things that adolescents do and impulsively criticize them. Instead I like the saying of President Monson in the Priesthood Session of Conference last October that young people need less criticism and better examples.* On the island we want to build relationships with kids. Then when their emotional needs are met they will want to change on their own. I think that it works. Last week I saw marked improvement in both princess and drama queen. It could be a temporary change but I like to think I’m seeing the fruit of what we do.