Kids will be kids, I guess
Posted on May 6th, 2012
In the past, kids have been mean to Pea, and it’s stung (me); she hasn’t noticed it. Or rather, she hadn’t noticed it until last night.
Thursday, when a 9-year-old was nasty to her, only I noticed: I glared at the 9-year-old and it didn’t repeat. Last night, we were at a party and she came up to me, upset that “those kids are making fun of me.”
Well. What to do? All the kids were older. Pea can be a pest. I know this. She can get on my last nerve, what with the near-constant interrogations.
But.
She was crestfallen.
I don’t make fun of my kid. Ever. I don’t hit my child. I don’t scare my child. I don’t do anything that I think could possibly be cruel, because the world is cruel enough and she will learn those lessons on her own and, oh, I am her mother and I want her to be safe and protected and loved.
So this was the first time she noticed a kid was not nice to her, at least so far as I know. It may have happened at school before, but not to the point anyone (including Pea) ever mentioned it to me.
While suppressing my desire to be cruel to other people’s children, we made excuses and went home. In the car, I tried to explain that some kids are just not nice (or may just not act nicely) and when that happens she should tell the kids to stop and if they don’t stop then to tell me or another grown-up, and….
…and that isn’t very comforting. Eventually, she calmed down. Ice cream was involved. But I wasn’t comforted. I was left with this awful mix of rage and pity (for the other kids, for whatever it is in them that makes them cruel to a sweet, if persistent, four-year-old) and Mitleid. Lots and lots of Mitleid.
Today I’m left with the holy shit oh my god what have I done fear that this is the world she has to live in, because, well, school.
School.
I understand where you’re coming from. You love your kids to distraction, but the world is sometimes mean. Even nice kids are mean sometimes. We have very long “What do you do when…” conversations here (all the courses in social skills training have really paid off, if only in my own household). All we can do is offer support and encouragement, and give the kids the tools to cope, knowing full well that sometimes, it won’t be enough. That their hearts will get broken, and people won’t like them for whatever reason, legitimate or not.
Yeah, it just sucks. We rehearse how to handle things a little, but she had a group of (much older) kids laughing at her. I think she did the right thing: removed herself from the situation, albeit hurt. And I think I did the right thing, which was remove myself before I committed battery.
I hated elementary school and middle school because I was wildly unpopular. I can’t decide whether I’m going to do what I can to help P.’s popularity – dressing her NOT like a boy (thanks, mom), not giving her a bowl cut or a mullet (thanks, mom), etc. – or just let it happen if it’s happening. I remember lots of crying, and then even more when hormones kicked in. However, all that crying – plus a year abroad in German school for 9th grade – did help me develop my current screw everyone who doesn’t like me for me attitude. College was fun precisely because by then I had perfected the art of giving no you-know-whats, in part because of how much my early social life stunk.
I think about this a lot. We moved so frequently that I was always the new kid, I was 18 months-2 years younger than most of my peers…let’s just say that I don’t think 10 is a good age to start middle school. Girls are vicious.
What it did do was make me VERY strong outwardly, because I knew no one would back me up at home. (Inwardly, though…yeah.)
I keep thinking there must be some kinder, gentler way to develop self-esteem.
So sorry. There is almost nothing that tears a mother’s heart more.