On helping Ella stand strong

I'm away at a software seminar in New Hampshire, and trying to stay up late so I can wake up late so I can stay up really late tomorrow night as I drive home, which is a 7-hour drive when the roads are good and (as I found out last night when driving here) a nearly 10-hour drive when the roads stink.

I hate driving in heavy snow, even in a Subaru with nice four-wheel drive.

Anyway, that's not what I'm writing about. I've been meaning to write about something that happened with Ella last Friday.

She had a lovely little friend over, Caroline. Caroline is a sweet little waif-like thing, if possible even shyer than Ella. And the thing is, I know Caroline is really a very nice little normal girl. But a game she insisted that she wanted to play while she was over here, despite Ella's objections, made Ella extremely uncomfortable. And Ella didn't know what to do about it. Moreover, Caroline insisted that it was a "secret" game.

I came upstairs while the secret game was being played. They giggled nervously, but didn't tell me what it was. I figured it was some silly role-playing game, and thought no more of it, letting them have their little secret. How bad could it be?

Later, after Caroline left, I found out that Ella had tried to get Caroline to stop playing the game, but Caroline wouldn't, and Ella felt compelled to go along with it. She wished I had been able to stop it.

What! What! I was shocked, but didn't act upset in front of Ella. "What was it?"

Ella burst into tears. "I can't tell you. I'm too embarrassed."

My GOD! What the HELL?

Thereafter ensued a full half hour of 60 Questions, gently put to my sweet baby, to which Ella, speechless, nodded or shook her head, sobbing, and eventual...thank goodness...a real anticlimax. "I just can't tell you, Mom. I can't, I'm too embarrassed."

I got worried, very worried. "Were there rules to this game?" Yes. "Is it played in a specific room?" Yes. "Is it the hall?" No. "Is it the bedroom?" No. "Is it the bathroom?" Yes. "Is it with your bodies?" Yes. "Is it pretend play, role play?" Yes. "Is it doctor or something like that? You know that little kids do that sometimes, Ella, it's natural." No. No one took off their clothes. Bathroom, bathroom...what the hell? I got scared. "Tell me you didn't do anything with the medicines, Ella." No, nothing like that. It was all pretend. You needed at least three people to do it, so they had to pretend one of the people. Ella was upset, Ella tried to tell Caroline that her Mom wouldn't like it but Caroline just kept playing it, over and over, and Ella wished she could get her to stop...

Finally, I got it out of her, after a lot of talk about what it means to have the courage to do the right thing, how if a little kid makes you promise not to tell the grownups you can promise not to tell AND STILL TELL THE GROWNUPS ANYWAY, you're allowed to do that...

Turns out it was a variation on the age-old cops-and-robbers kind of play...the goal of this weird little game was that you're supposed to run around the house and when you got to the bathroom, well, that was the edge of a cliff and you were supposed to push pretend people off the cliff into a pot.

Ick, yes, kind of. But WHEW!!! No weirder than other things kids play. Nothing that I had to be really concerned about, nothing I had to report to Caroline's parents or anything. The whole time Ella was sobbing in my arms I was envisioning calling up Kelli to give her the scary news about her little girl's games. Thank goodness.

But Ella, my beautiful sweet-souled angel, just couldn't stand the idea. This is something that might have gone over her head a while ago...but Ella, I think partly due to her new awareness about the implications of the things she does, her new awareness of her own efficacy in the big wide world, just couldn't stand the idea of pretending to hurt people. It was so confusing for her why someone would want to pretend that, she thought it was awful, just shamefully awful. My little girl who always wants to help, who always wants to make things better, felt herself compelled to participate in this weird little game.

And that's the thing that we have to consider now...how to be strong in the face of her friends' desires to do something she doesn't want to do. I think she was embarrassed not really at the fact of the game's having been played, but at her own inability to stop it. Not that she SHOULD have the skills to do this at her age, but she didn't know that. So that's my task for the next little while, to help Ella build up her strength of character so that when someone wants her to do something she doesn't want to do, she is able to refuse and to turn the situation around.

I think Nancy Reagan's admonition is too simplistic, though. Even for a 6-year-old. Suggestions would be more than welcome.

By the way, we went right out to Target afterward and I just got her lots of stuff, clothes, mostly, and a doll she really wanted. She was shocked, and very, very pleased. We never do that. (Well, she needed the clothes. The doll was to celebrate her courage.) I want her to remember how it feels, to associate pride and fun and happiness with the achievement of doing something right, a thing she found so very difficult.

Heartbreaking, though, from a parent's perspective. I thought we'd be able to wait awhile on this one.