The Boy started school some three weeks ago. He goes three days a week in the afternoon. It's Montessori and kind of structured. Class ends at four, but they will hold the kids until five thirty for parents that work. It lets the kids run out their energy on the playground under supervision. I let the Boy do this until five or so, though I could pick him up whenever.Today when I got there one of the teachers told me he had been hurt while playing. An errant foot at the swings had caught him in the hip. They'd put an icepack on it and he seemed none the worse for wear.
As we drove home he asked to have his window opened and sat there quietly. He seemed melancholy. Finally he asked, "Daddy, why did the other kids call me a baby?"
"When did the other kids call you a baby?"
"By the swings. Today," he said.
"When you got hurt?" I asked, digging deeper.
"No, when we were swinging."
"Did you want to swing and they wouldn't let you?" I asked thinking there had been an issue regarding fair use.
"No." And then he got quiet.
It suddenly dawned on me.
"Did they call you a baby because you don't know how to swing by yourself?" I asked gingerly. He has not yet mastered the unassisted swing techniques. I have tried to teach him, but have not pressed it - I failed to treat it as a crucial skill-set.
"Yes, they said I don't know how to swing, so I'm a baby." He was sad.
"What did you say?"
"I said I not a baby. I a big boy."
"What did they say?"
"They laughed and said I was a big baby."
"What happened then?"
"I just helped some other kids that couldn't swing. They called them babies too. I pushed them on the swings so they weren't sad."
I sat there for a second.
"Hey, little man, how bout we go to the park and work on swinging this Thursday?" I offered finally.
"Ok," he agreed less enthusiastically than I hoped.
It was quiet again. I was searching my console for a tissue or anything.
"Daddy?"
"Yes?"
"Am I a baby cause I can't swing?"
"Boy," I said, and blew my nose, "you're more grown up than I ever imagined. You're a very big boy."
He thought about it for a moment, then, "Thank you, daddy."
11 comments:
You could teach him to swing, or I could just go to the school tomorrow and find the offending twerp and kick his little ass.
You go girl - You doing that would remind me of the time my two sons complained about bullies being mean to them on the way to school -
Do it anyway - I did.
Yeah, this is a classic Mama Bear/Papa Bear problem. I often wanted to go all Mama Bear on little kids' asses when my kids were first starting to interact on the playground. And I was, in fact, nearly in tears often. For some reason this gets easier over time. Sort of.
You violent women, you. I think I was more impressed by his reaction to others' suffering. That the name-calling hurt his feelings, yet his response was to ease the sadness of his fellow victims is the most pride-producing thing his old man could imagine.
So are kids naturally bullies? Do they have some deep predatory (cull-the-clan) reflex that pounces on the smaller weaker among them? Or, the kids that do indulge in this behavior, maybe it's because their parents are troglodytic pricks? But haven't we all been those other mean kids at one time or another, even if 99% of the time we were the target? Hmmm. Just wondering aloud. On your blog.
I suspect, though I have no evidence as regards this particular case, that these kids had older brothers and sisters that accomodated both their early swing skills and their refined torturing techniques. It's possible parents helped.
That said, Lord Of The Flies wasn't pulled from thin air. Kids are what we let them become. Just happy my Boy has a sincere sense of empathy (even though it's rarely displayed regarding his sister).
I think kids that age are so sensitive to any differentiator that proves that they're big girls and boys, not babies. Parents play into it by encouraging their kids to learn new skills by saying "you're not a baby, only babies do xx." In my mind one thing that differentiates mature from immature people is compassion and it sounds like the Boy has this in abundance.
Arlopop...
I know that I skimmed past it, but his act of kindness was not lost on me. I guess his reaction just made me want to protect him all the more.
When I dropped the Boy off at school today he clung to me. This is unusual, he generally bounds off and I can hardly get a goodbye. He stood holding my hand and he spoke softly to the ground. I knelt down so that I could hear him and I asked him to repeat himself. He told me that he didn't want to go and that he was scared. I hugged him and told him that he was okay Are there any more meaningless words that those? Just at the moment the director of the school motioned for him to come over to her and she encouraged him to go out and play on the playground. She asked him if he saw anyone that he knew. He stopped and looked around and spotted a little boy sitting (not swinging) on a swing. As he ran over there, the little boy lifted his hand in greeting and called out my son's name. He plopped himself on the other swing and the two boys just sat there smiling and talking about whatever it is that preschoolers talk about. A moment later a teacher walked over to them and began to push them on the swings, higher and higher into the air.
If I had known that my heart would be broken on such a regular basis, I'm not sure that I would have signed up for this motherhood thing.
Your boy there is already a kind and thoughtful human. So, thank you.
thank you, blaize
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