This evening, after dinner, A. went out to play with the local kids in the strip of green outside our block of flats, where a boy hit him and gave him a bloody lip. A's friend (an older girl who lives downstairs) brought him home, saying she had tried to stop the fight, but couldn't. While we were trying to stop the bleeding, this boy came to our door with a couple of friends to ask if A. was coming back out to play and I told him he was a bully, never to come to my door again and slammed the door in his face.
Once A's lip stopped bleeding, we had a long talk and he eventually told me what happened.
He called this boy the "R" word. A very hurtful and ignorant word that is not allowed in this house. I thought he understood why we find this word so offensive, but he didn't, only that was a bad name and so he used it on a boy who plays too rough for him. And instead of apologising when this boy got (rightly) upset and asked "do you want a fight?" A. said yes. "Because I didn't want to look like a wimp." Because he mixed up real life and computer games and thought he knew how to fight.
I told A. that I am disappointed in him for using hurtful words, that I think he should apologise next time he sees this boy and that I would like the chance to apologise too. I have tried to explain to him the difference between computer games and real life - it remains to be seen if he understands that yet.
So, I learned some lessons today:
- Just because my child avoids conflict at home and at school, it doesn't mean he didn't start a fight with a boy he's scared of.
- Just because a child plays rough and is a bit cheeky with me, it doesn't mean he's a bully.
- I should keep my big mouth shut when I'm angry and find out what really happened before I go apportioning blame.
- I can't sleep properly when I know I've been unjust (hence posting this at 5:30am in the hope that, having admitted it, I can snooze for a few more hours).
4 comments:
Am i being dense here but what is the 'R' word? Sorry :(
Sorry Fay. No, you are not being dense. The "R" word is "retard"
God bless you, Fay. I never thought we'd get to the say when someone would actually not know what it means when we say "the r-word." I hope that's a sign of progress.
Maybe I'm the dense one here, but Jackie, if your son is having a hard time distinguishing the different kinds of reality, then maybe he shouldn't be playing the games? Of course, I don't know the whole story here. As a person who suffers from Manic-Depression (I dislike the term bi-polar) and OCD, I find I have to make a lot of choices about reading and viewing material that I find has a decidedly negative impact on what I tend to brood about when I'm depressed. When I was younger, that made me sometimes rather unpopular.
Keep up the good work here. It's good to know there's still a few people left in the world for whom injustice leads to insomnia.
Thank you. x
He gets the difference most of the time, but when he gets stressed he retreats into his fantasy world - a mish-mash of LEGO Lord of The Rings (Wii game) and The Incredibles.
It's really no different to my childhood strategy for dealing with stress, only mine was a world populated by ogres, magic and poisoned apples.
I too ended up with many a bruise and scrape because I lost sight of reality every now and again. I grew to recognise when I was doing it and am trying to help him do the same without ruining his fantasy world completely.
He's not been in any fights since, and has played out with this boy again so *fingers crossed*
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