My Kid, the bully…
February 11, 2010Each child has their own specific set of joys and challenges. I guess that’s what keeps us on our toes. With Xander, I sometimes worry that he is too sensitive, that he doesn’t stick up for himself and therefore it’s easier for him and his feelings to get trampled on. I was just getting used to this – to responding to Xander and encouraging him to be assertive where appropriate.
With Parker, it’s the exact opposite. Case in point: yesterday I arrived at day care to pick up the boys. I stopped to check in with Parker’s teacher, and while I was there, another little boy’s mother arrived. Parker was already in his coat and ready to go, but toddling around happily while I talked. When this mother help up her son’s coat to get him ready, he immediately laid face-down on the ground and began to cry. She and the teacher began discussing this new behavior of his while a little girl in the class helped the boy up off the floor. He continued to cry, but was standing. Parker toddled over with his arms out. I almost picked him up as he walked by, but he had his arms out like maybe he was going to hug this other little boy, so I let him go. What did he do you ask? He walked right up to this crying little boy with a big smile on his face and pushed him in the chest. I was mortified. I of course swooped Parker away and said “oh Parker, we don’t push, we hug” while demonstrating a hug. Parker may or may not have understood the lesson (I repeated it a few times) but it’s been sinking in with me for months. Our boy is rough and tumble through and through. He loves to push, pull, tug and hit. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times we remind him to be gentle or how many times we show him how to touch people gently. His first reaction is to hit. His behavior means that he is the child who is put into a pack ‘n play or a jump-a-roo to give the other kids in the room a break from him. Parker really believes that he is just playing, that his actions are all in fun, but of course they aren’t interpreted that way. We won’t give up, but this new kid with this new behavior is certainly proving to be a challenge for us!
How about the rest of you – do you have a hitter or a biter, and have you found any effective strategies in teaching them other methods of “playing”?
Every once in a while I find an “incident report” taped to Xander’s cubby at school. These reports are usually an explanation of some minor injury Xander sustained during play time. He’s two and these sorts of things happen regularly and don’t surprise us anymore. Once in a while the incident report contains additional information explaining that another child was responsible for said injury (a bite, a whack to the head, etc.) I’ve seen other parents get incident reports explaining that their child was the cause of injury to another child. Xander hasn’t ever had one of those incident reports (thankfully!!) But after receiving the latest report of Xander getting injured by another child, I started to wonder if perhaps my kid is a perpetual victim. Does he have some sort of inate personality trait that makes him more attractive to bullies? Is he able to assert himself when necessary? Is this something that I can teach to a two year old? Is this a problem that I should address before it becomes more serious, or am I just worrying unnecessarily? I know my little guy can be overly sensitive – his feelings get hurt easily and depending on his energy level, even the smallest slight can appear to be a tragedy in his eyes. On one hand, he’s two. Some of his reaction is simply his age. On the other hand, I don’t want to overly coddle him and continue to see these sorts of reactions when he’s 4, 8, 10, etc. Ug, this feels like one of those challenging parenting moments when I’m going to have to pick a path and pray that it was the right one, and never really knowing if my decision was the best one, or if things would have been better if I reacted differently…