Xander Week 121 – Is My Kid a Victim?
July 29, 2009*Editor’s note: I wrote this and then apparently forgot to publish it, so here it is – a few weeks late…
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…
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Sara,
Don’t worry! Unless the same kid is picking on Xander over and over again then I would have a talk with his teacher. That is great that Xander never picks on any of the other kids but I don’t think you can teach a kid to stand up for themself when they are two. I think it is something that they learn by doing. I am sure that his teacher talks to the offending child about their behavior, maybe you could ask her to remind Xander to tell kids when he doesn’t like what they are doing. Sounds like you have two great kids and are doing a great job. I am sure Xander will be just fine.
Keep up the interesting blogging.
Mary B.