The Facebook kid

The Facebook kid
For the sake of confidentally I will use "Alex" when I recognize this young kid.

Alex is a regular gambler fan, that is the type of kid that is always at the front of the crowd, or with is arm over the railing wishing you the best of luck before you take the the ice for the oncoming period. This unbelievably cheerful young kid , that is always bright and smiling and screaming and yelling for us to beat the crap out of the other team that night turns out not to be so joyful away from the rink. Through Facebook his mom "Patty" would send me regular messages referring to the games and mentioning how Alex is always so happy at the games and how he enjoys to watch me. After several weeks of this she eventually gave me her life story, which was perfectly fine because I could tell she needed someone to talk to..Turns out that Alex's father is pretty much no-existent in his life, and Alex has a case of depression and has no moviatation in school now..All of which of course are just awful to see a 12 year old kid, and little buddy of mine see have. Turns out after a couple more weeks of seeing the shrinks he didn't make much progress and the shrink Patty told me wasn't connecting very well with him..I immediately ask for a number to reach Alex at the following night, and we talked for a half hour about everything. Seems to me that he is repressing his thoughts and his anger about his father, which is causing him this added anger at home. But, I also think that you could make a case for him using sublimation  and taking out all of his anger at our games through expressing himself by being our biggest fan. Now I know it's not my business probably to of been asking this question and giving him some big brother advice. But with my help he was able to bear down and get an A+ on his science test that week, and now has turned all of his grades around. Alex and Patty are some of the sweetest people you'll ever meet, I wish them the best of best luck, and really look forward to seeing them this weekend at the games, along with keeping our routine of weekly phone conversations.