One of the benefits of being 'older' first time parents (as determined by your religious culture) is collecting insight from people around us whom have been doing it several years prior. Best Practices, if you will, right before our eyes.
Today at the park I saw two moms champion their kids from a little bully girl.
Zane was staked out in his usual spot- the little blue coup car, only now it's a convertable and most parts are missing like it was parked in the Bronx overnight. He watched the whole operation go down.
Bigger boys were going down the tunnel slide and some girl threw sand and sticks into their faces as they emerged from the tunnel. The mothers of the victims shot up from their benches and marched their gucci loafers directly to the scene of the crime without hesitation, like a swat team.
I didn't hear what was said, just that the mother of the girl was nowhere to be seen until much later, when her girl was crying cos she felt bad for being yelled at by other moms, not for what she had done.
I wanted to judge and be mad at the little girl and her mom and then I wanted to defend them in the same heartbeat and hoped it would be a learning moment for all involved.
I thought about how I would have handled the situation from either end as a mother. The more I thought about it, the more I realized no matter what the gucci mothers said, the important part of the process was how the girl's mother would handle it from there. Everyone's kid is going to experiement somehow when the parents aren't looking and we can't always be looking.
I determined if I am in that situation, I hope to tell my child what was wrong about what happened and when (s)he didn't apologize to the boys (she did refuse to), I will immediately leave the park and that would be at least one of the negative consequences. From what I saw, she did not have a single negative consequence and was the last kid playing at the park.
If I am the the mom of the victim I hope I do not hesitate, either. I also hope Zane remembers his karate moves his cousin will teach him.
It's probably not all that complicated of a situation, but I just want to do it right when I am on either end of that scenario! And for so many years I thought analyzing data in spreadsheets was complicated.
