Sprite's Site

There was a piece of scrumpled paper in the bottom of Sprite’s backpack.
When I had smoother it out I realized that it was a History homework assignment which was due to be submitted in two days.

“What’s this?” I asked “Have you finished it already?”
“No” said Sprite.
“Well have you done any work on it?”
“No” said Sprite. “I went to see the Professor and Paula the Physicist and Paula said…”
“Don’t change the topic young lady!”
“I’m not! Paula said I didn’t have to do it yet!”
“That doesn’t sound like something Paula would say” I said.
Paula had been a very encouraging mentor for Sprite but she had always been firm when necessary. “Did she suggest that you could ask for an extension?”

“I didn’t tell her about the History assignment. I was asking her about dimensions after what you said about the chair. And she was talking about time as a fourth dimension and vectors and relativity and tesseracts and lots of other stuff. We were talking about the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_dimension
We were also talking about how different dimensions could have different times.
And I remembered that you said you drew all my backgrounds. So that means the dimension I’m in only started when you did that first picture and that was about one of your years ago.
So that means, unless my time scale is really different from yours, it couldn’t possibly be March 2010 for me and so I still have 2009 years to finish the History assignment!”

Our family really enjoys the TV series The Big Bang Theory so I was delighted to find a blog about the science behind the science. It is the Big Blog Theory at http://thebigblogtheory.wordpress.com/

Sprite loves The Big Bang Theory too and often invites Intellectual Dabrowski in to watch it with her.
“But there’s one thing I don’t get!” she said “Why does everyone laugh when Sheldon gets upset when people sit in his place on the couch?
I don’t think that’s funny. I would get really upset if you sat in my chair!”

“Don’t worry.” I said “that is not likely to happen!”
“Why?” asked Sprite “Because you’re too fat to sit in my seat – like Goldilocks?”
“No because you are not even in the same dimension as I am; so I can’t sit in your seat.”
“Yeah, like I said, the dimensions of your seat are too big for my seat”

Annie Fox says:
March 6, 2010 at 6:27 am
Hi Sprite,

You’ve asked a really important question. “Why are kids mean to each other?” Wow! I could write a book just on that one! Actually, in a way, I already have. If you haven’t yet read “Real Friends vs. The Other Kind” you should. In it you will definitely find some answers to the most common friendship issues.

but you don’t have to read the book to realize that people (that includes adults, kids, tweens and teens) are incredibly complex! Sometimes we want to do the right thing and we do it. The “right” thing can include: being respectful to other people, being kind, being true to yourself, etc. And sometimes we’re not sure what the right thing is. Why? Because at that moment you might feel very scared or very angry or very embarrassed. Those intense emotions can make it really hard to think straight. And I don’t about you, but when I’m not thinking straight, I am much more likely to do or say something I later regret… something that’s rude and hurts someone’s feelings.

Back to your question: some kids are mean to other kids because the adults in their lives haven’t been very nice to them. So those kids feel bad about themselves. When a person feels that way a lot of the time he or she lashes out at others. It’s not fair, and it doesn’t make it OK. No way! But it may help you understand where the “mean kid” is coming from.

in those situations the best thing you can do is first to take some slow deep breaths to calm yourself down. Then calmly and maturely let people know (by your words and your behavior) that you don’t appreciate what they did. Do your best to put yourself back in control of your own behavior. Know that you deserve respect and show, by the choices you make at school and at home, that you always respect yourself.

Oh, one more thing that can help in these annoying situations, is to remind yourself that you won’t be going to this school with these kids forever. Thank goodness! As you get older and move up in the grades the other kids get more mature and less interested in putting down other people.

Sprite was very excited.
“Look, Annie Fox wroteto me! The letter was in the Comments Box but I printed it out and I’m going to put it up on the blog so everyone is sure to see it because not everyone reads the Comments. I do – I like to see what people think about articles”

“Can you help me write the letter to Annie Fox at http://anniefox.com/ NOW please?” demanded Sprite “I asked you to help me do that a couple of weeks ago!“
“OK, what do you want to write?”
“Just tell her all that mean stuff the queen bee girls were saying to me, calling me Spit and Spite and ask her why kids are mean like that! Send her the blog entry you wrote about it.“ http://www.giftedresources.org/jo/blog/?p=267
“OK,” I said “I’ll do that.
But in the meantime have a look at What Kids Want to Know about Bullying and Other Friendship Issues at http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Kids-Want-to-Know-About-Bullying-and-Other-Friendship-Issues&id=3723788
I think you will find that was one of one of the questions she answered.”

Also I will see whether we can get some of her books for you to read” http://www.anniefox.com/books/msc.html

Annie Fox has a series called Middle School Confidential. You can watch a video trailer at http://www.anniefox.com/books/msc.html and you can download a free leaders’ guide to the series at http://www.freespirit.com/files/OTHER/Leader’s_Guide_to_the_MS_Confidential_Series.pdf

As well as the Middle School Confidential series Annie Fox has written Too stressed to think and The Teen Survival Guide to Dating & Relating which is out of print now but can be downloaded FREE at http://www.anniefox.com/books/tsg.html

“There!!!” said Sprite. “Intellectual Dabrowski helped to design a Book Launcher for you for when you have Sally-Anne McCormack speaking about her new book Stomp out the ANTs I saw it advertised on your Gifted Resources website Events page http://www.giftedresources.org/gr/events.htm
Here’s how it works. When you cut the ribbon with the scissors the bottle of champagne tips over and the champagne runs into the conveyor and the boat with the books on it floats down the conveyor to the balloon dock and they get taken away by balloon. And I even put a conveyor down to your office so that you can have some of her books there too!”
“I had lots of other ideas but Intellectual Dabrowski said he could hear someone whistling for him. And he told me to use the spell checker when I wrote my next note to you.”

Sorry about the spelling on my note. It’s probably all wrong and I really hate it to be be wrong but I had to write it down really fast and hang on to Intellectual Dabrowski at the same time.
If I let go of him he would run away before I could get him to design a Book Launcher for you.
We’re working on it now – should be finished soon
From Sprite xoxoxo