The first really tricky social situation

Ella's friend L is over for a play date. Her brother, M, is not.

It's a bit tricky of a situation: Up until about 3 weeks ago, we went over to L's house every week so that L's mother, who is from South America, could teach Spanish to her kids (L, age almost-7, and M, age just-8) and mine. Ella had met L in Montessori preschool when she was 3.

In brief, M is an angry, angry little boy with -- I'm sure -- problems that are defined in the DSM-IV. Since we started these little Spanish classes, he would punctuate the lessons, and the kids' play time outside of lessons, with outbursts of hostility and rudeness. The things he does are things which, had one of my girls done it, FIVE SECONDS into the incident, I would have been hastily packing up the troublemaker and her sister and, with red cheeks, apologizing to the family as we left. Because I'll be darned if my kids are going to be hostile or nasty or rude...not that it's ever happened...but I would never subject someone else to it, and let me tell you, my kid sure wouldn't do it a second time.

Although admitting that M has a problem, the mother is completely passive. She's the worst I've ever seen on laying down rules and consequences and sticking to them. And she thinks that despite M's hostility, despite the fact that he often scowls, "Go away, you're stupid" when the kids (especially Madison, who is closer in age to him) want to play, the mother thinks that he has a right to play with the girls, and that excluding him from their play when he's recently been a brat is mean. Let me tell you, if my girls were even HALF as snotty as that kid, I'd be ORDERING the kids not to play with her. (I am admittedly overly sensitive to this...my sister turned into a horribly snotty adult, and I'll be damned if my kids are going to be anything like her.) I have put up with this because Ella loves L, and because of the Spanish.

In any case, about 3-4 weeks ago, M had been particularly hideous during Spanish. And then later, during play time, he was barging in on the room where Ella and L were playing, and in the confusion Ella tripped and knocked him down, falling on top of him. M decided that Ella had hurt him on purpose, drew back his arm, and HIT HER three times, hard and deliberately. I don't think it was hard enough to make Ella cry, though; at least, she wasn't crying when she came downstairs. (Of course, that's not the point.) It was the first time, apparently, that M had hit someone who wasn't his sister.

We were in the process of leaving anyway, and I didn't really get much of the story on the way out the door. But then, I found out the next day that M had decided that the girls owed HIM an apology for excluding him from their play, and that Ella owed him an apology for tripping on him and knocking him down. My girls were stunned, and very, very upset.

I decided to have the mother over while her kids were at school, so that my girls could talk to her without her being distracted by her own kids. I wanted to engineer having HER say to my girls that it was NOT their fault, that they did the right thing, etc. And I also wanted to engineer the conversation so that the mother, not I, would decide that they would have to stop having M in the mix when the kids played, that instead she would send L over here for a while, until we could be sure that M wouldn't be hitting anyone.

The conversation was stressful for me, as it was for the mother, but I'm sure Madison and Ella didn't notice our discomfort; they were upset enough. I was able to say to them, and the mother echoed that I was right, that IT IS NOT THE GIRLS' RESPONSIBILITY to ensure that M did not hit them. They didn't have to do ANYTHING different, treat him in any special way. "And," I emphasized to them, in the mother's presence, "M will NOT hit you again. That is MY job, to ensure that my girls are not in a situation where someone just might hit them."

"Well, as we can't guarantee that," sighed the mother, "we'll just have to have L over here to play for a while, instead of all of you coming over to my house."

So it worked.

There was no talk of my girls apologizing, at all. I would not have stood for that. But I'm pleased that I was able to salvage the situation without hinting to the girls that Ella couldn't be friends with L anymore. That would have been traumatic. But the fact is, the family is enough messed up that I will begin pulling away from them gradually. Because seriously, when you think of the messed-up kids who shoot up their schools, and imagine what they were like when they were 7 or 8, you're imagining M.

During this conversation, I told the girls that if someone ever hits them deliberately, they are morally justified in hitting them back. They were horrified; they didn't think they could ever do it, and I was sure that was true. "It's usually better just to tell a grownup who can prevent this from happening again," I affirmed. "But nevertheless," I insisted, "You have no MORAL problem with me if you hit back someone who attacks you."

The mother was horrified. "Oh no, those aren't my rules at all," she told the girls. "Your mother and I disagree. If someone hits you, you don't hit back, the right thing to do is you always walk or run away."

Of course, HER kid is the one who is hitting people, not mine. And, she is wrong. Bullies only stop when opposed with force, or viable threat of force.


It's been 3 weeks (possibly even 4) since we saw L, and the girls seem to be playing together well upstairs right now. So, I'll be casual about this for the time being.

This was a hard enough situation for me that I couldn't even bring myself to blog about it for all these weeks.