TGIMonday. Now with more bullying!
For all the relief of Friday finally coming, to be honest weekends often turn out way more stressful than weekdays. Sure, I have a heaping helping of laundry and other mundane tasks during the week, and of course the ever-enjoyable cooking. Those are pluses.
However, on weekends it becomes MY job to convince Sami that she wants/needs to nap, and though she still desperately NEEDS them, she’s not so sold on the “want” part. So this becomes an entire afternoon’s stress for me. I got lucky yesterday, and said some magical combination of words in response to which she picked up and said, “I’m putting myself to sleep,” and marched to her room directly. She played for a while, but then quiet ruled the house for at least two hours, and I was able to get my batteries at least part-recharged in that time.
This weekend we were exceptionally busy – and we didn’t even meet all our obligations! We thoroughly spent Sami in the sunny backyard at a friend’s baby shower, and by the time we got home she was in complete melt down. It took a long time to get her to that desperately needed nap, and by the time we did it was already well past the start time for the 3-year-old’s birthday party we’d been supposed to attend. Le sigh. We can’t win them all. Truth be told, all three of us were run down by 5 pm Saturday.
Yesterday was kind of a challenge for me in the parenting arena. We attended an adult’s birthday party, heavily attended by children in the 3-8 year range. It was a lovely time, and the hostess even thought to rent a jumpy castle to entertain the tykes. All went well until at some point I thought to glance out at the kids in the jumpy and saw a fellow 3-year-old boy just whaling away on Sami.
It was about the only time, other than the diaper cream incident, when I’ve seen red, but I did manage not to fly off the handle completely. I strode outside, stopped all the activity in the jumpy, and said to the kid that it’s NOT OK to hit other kids, and if it happened again I’d have to talk to his mom. Sami was, naturally, unfazed. I think the jumpy experience was rough in general, due to the complete lack of control over her own motion, so a small beating from a peer didn’t sink her spirits.
From then on the kid’s older brother monitored him, and the rest of the afternoon was spent pleasantly.
Man, I never knew I’d be the crazy mom. I mean, I know they’re little and I know most kids grow out of it, but I also know that Sami isn’t a hitter, and doesn’t even generally make waves when other kids hit her, which when it happens is well-attended by her teachers, and usually is a single-blow incident. This kid targeted Sami and went after her a few times, and when he did he was literally whaling on her blow after blow. Future anger management? Maybe. Or hopefully he’ll learn to manage his emotions and grow out of it like most of us do.
This prompted Ben and me to discuss how we should teach her to handle future such incidents. Ben’s opinion was that she should learn early to kick hard, once, for retaliation purposes only, in sensitive areas. You can imagine where this would be, since in our case all of the culprits have been boys. His other suggestion was that she should tell the predators, You hit me because you mother doesn’t love you.
Naturally, I don’t like either of these tactics, but on the other hand saying, “Stop hurting me, I don’t like it,” isn’t an effective solution unless the altercation occurs in a classroom. (OF course, the emotional tactic had to be refined, more like: “Oh, poor thing, I know you only hit me because you don’t feel loved at home;” but that level of manipulation wouldn’t really be accessible to a three-year old, even one as verbal as ours, and also I DISAPPROVE.)
I never was the brunt of any sort of bullying – I was the nose-in-a-book sort through grade school and had a pretty healthy social life in high school, all things considered. Kept to myself, managed to avoid trouble. But I remember that my brother, being a boy and therefore more susceptible to physical threats, used to get picked on and pushed around on the Catholic-school playground. And I distinctly remember my dad telling him to push back, don’t let the other kids push you around. Push back once, show them you’re not afraid, and they’ll leave you alone.
I don’t know/remember if it worked, but I can see the logic in it.
So I don’t want to teach her that violence begets violence, exactly, but I can appreciate how giving a kid a taste of his/her own medicine can easily remedy such a situation. We also kind of resist the idea that telling a teacher/authority is the way to go, since self reliance is important, conflict management is important, and knowing WHEN to report offenses is also a valuable skill.
Obviously we’re not coaching Sami yet in anything but Tell them you don’t like it, say STOP and then walk away. But what would you teach your kid, in a similar situation, at age 3 or age 30?
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Um, speaking as the kid who got the crap beat out of her from ages 8-14 on a regular basis, it came as a great shock to me when my parents told me, rather late, that I was allowed to hit back, I just wasn’t allowed to hit first. Of course, because that knowledge came so late, I was already in the habit of curling into a ball and waiting until it was over, and never did manage to sock anyone.
“Tell them you don’t like it, say STOP and then walk away” sounds perfect. And if they won’t let you go, then hit them back just enough to get away.
.-= Uccellina´s last blog ..Poem of first words =-.
I was also CONSTANTLY picked on. My parents attempted the take-the-high-road approach, where I was to ignore it and it would go away.
This did not work, as best as I can remember.
I don’t know the best solution. My fear about the STOP and walk away thing is that almost could goad the bully on. S/He got the attention they were seeking, and will keep going. Calling the kid’s parents may not have any effect, as the apple may not fall far from the tree.
I think a good option is to really teach Sami self-worth & self-respect. She won’t get picked on if the bullies do not sense fear.
I’m not sure I ever learned that — my parents taught me to be humble, which makes sense on one hand. They didn’t want me to have that sense of entitlement that seems to be rampant with some kids. But I think there is a middle ground.
I’m having a hard time figuring out how much to get involved in disputes between Davey and other kids. For the most part, I figure if no one is crying than they are probably working it out among themselves, but I do try to keep Davey from being a bully. Although today I insisted that he share his toys with a little girl, which he was super pissed about. Then later the same little girl wouldn’t share with him, and she started to cry when he tried to play with something. Her mother was there, and she told Davey “That isn’t yours” and walked away with the little girl and her stuff. Except all the stuff belonged to Gymboree so it didn’t belong to that little girl either. It’s like you almost don’t want your kids to be nice if no one else is going to be.
On the other hand, are you sure the hitting was meant with malice? When Davey gets excited he starts whacking stuff with his hands excitedly. Once he started doing it to a little girl. She was totally unfazed by hit, but I was horrified. I told Davey “No hitting” and he stopped, but then the little girl realized that she had been hit several times (she hadn’t noticed before) and started to cry. I had to get involved because Davey can’t be hitting people, but on the other hand, I want them to learn to deal with there social issues on there own a little bit.
So basically I have no idea. I don’t want Davey to learn to fight back physically, mostly because of school’s unreasonable reactions. If you remember, in our high school everyone involved in a fight got suspended, even if they didn’t start it. Elementary schools expel kids for violence these days. I just don’t want him to get in trouble or hurt his future just because some kid is a jerk. On the other hand, I don’t want him to get beat up either. So I just don’t know.
@Mandy – I think to call it “malice” would be overstating – we’re talking about 3-ish-year-olds and in this case, I think the boy just somehow associated Sami with some level of not having as much fun as he could have been having. But he went after her repeatedly and with lots of force for such a little guy.
Like you, I do want Sami to learn to figure things out on her own. However, if she’s not going to stop a kid from beating on her, I will. Cause… ow.
I don’t know what the balance will be when she’s older, because I know being involved in a fight is not a good thing from a “permanent record” standpoint.” Luckily, things like this don’t come up a lot right now. So we have some time to think about it.