Why does Mike think Elly pays attention?

[dreadedcandiru2]

There's another reason that Mike doesn't like homework at all much: it's about the only time that Elly pays any attention to what he's doing and he doesn't get the praise he wants from the experience. As I've said before, Elly mutated the odd belief that praising children to their faces instead of when they're not around would lead them to expecting praise and getting swelled heads into a belief that she had to tear Mike down and call everything he did wrong and bad for his own good. Just as she couldn't encourage or sympathize with him during his years of trumpet practice because she loved him so much, she couldn't bear to see him turn into a snob, she can't allow herself to make Mike feel better about trying to struggle with math homework because his feeling good would always have a bad result.

It's this odd tendency to lovingly, kindly, firmly and fairly be someone who gives the appearance of waking up each morning wondering what new way she can torment the child she only ever had so she could have someone to torture out of the malice which is the only emotion she feels that makes our boy think something that just isn't the case. As the chaperone arc proves, the idea that Elly is lying in wait ready to spring out and bellow at him because she only had kids to have people to boss around because she's filled with anger is all in his head. Lynn might think that Elly's dressing as Naggo the Clown is why kids didn't take her seriously but it's the fact that Elly does what she always does that is why kids do not respect her authority. They don't much respect people who just stand around like imbeciles who look like they have better things to do than to pay attention to useless children who can't do stuff for them.