Earlier this school year, Soleil had a problem. There was a girl on the bus who picked on Soleil for having "brown hair". She also picked on another girl for stealing her name (the girls had the same first name). It came to a head when Soleil let her after school teachers know that this girl punched her on the bus and then kicked her under the seat.
Momma bear came out and so did, "Wait, maybe my kid caused it" Mama. So I gently asked if this could have been Soleil’s instigation in any way. The answer was along the lines of "I can’t tell you who did this or what happened exactly" while shaking her head "NO!"
I got the full details later from Soleil and suggested she stay away from the girl for now. After consulting with Jay, we discussed the incident with the principal and suggested some ideas of how to prevent this. We also made it clear we didn’t want to punish the other kid, we just wanted to prevent this from happening again.
Most of the situation has been resolved. We have to remind Soleil that not so long ago, she had trouble controlling her own emotions so she shouldn’t antagonize this girl.
While relating this story to a friend, she got mad that I didn’t tell Soleil to fight back. I argued that at 6 the world is still black and white. Shades of grey aren’t there yet. As she gets older, we’ll work on when it is okay to fight back (yes, I believe there is a point where you have to fight back) and when it isn’t.
Then today I read this article. Yeah- In that case? In 6th grade? If ANYONE hit her or a friend or even just another classmate for being Jewish? I expect some ass kicking to be done.
This isn’t really relative, but I asked Fabul-O one day, “What did you learn at school today?” Mind you, this is the same question I ask every day when I pick her up. That particular day her answer was the jaw-dropping, “If you hit the little kids with sticks they cry.” Holy crap. After finding out it wasn’t her who did the hitting with the sticks, we had a LONG discussion about how wrong that was.
She has been the brunt of a bully kid in her class who has an older brother who could very easily be the spawn of S@tan. I’ve had to go to the school b/c she got hit in the nose and it bled. The school punished the other kid and the mother was overly apologetic, but followed it up with, “kids will be kids.” I’ve also seen this mother crying in the car after her kids have gone into the school. It’s a small school and didn’t want to have ongoing problems, so I addressed it in a way that got a lot of raised eyebrows from family/friends. (each class has about 12 students in it. I think the sr. class might have 15) I made the choice in telling Olivia when “G” starts behaving badly, or any other kid, to walk away and find other toys, etc. to play with. If that doesn’t work, then the next thing she needs to do is find a teacher. We’re entering the “tattling” phase right now, so that part is coming back to bite me in the arse, but it has worked well. Of course, Will told her, “sock her in the nose.” so that took a bit of undoing, too.
As far as the article, I’m with you, sister.
I think how to deal with it is case by case and it’s pretty hard for kids to figure it all out. While I would normally never suggest fighting back as a first course of action, there was an instance when I did eventually say “hit back”. When my son was in kindergarten, there was this one kid who would constantly hit him. This kid had some issues with regard to touch and space and such – he would hit kids but nobody was allowed near him. After discussing this with the teachers and their unsuccessful attempts to get the hitting to stop, I told my son to just hit the kid back. The other kid was so stunned someone dared to touch him! My son told him “you don’t hit me, I don’t hit you”. Kid never touched him again… so in this instance, it worked.