It's challenging as a parent to stand by and watch your child deal with a difficult situation. You never want to see you child hurt emotionally or physically but sometimes you need to back off and let them experience pain in order to learn from it.
We recently experienced this when we were playing at a local playground and a new group of kids came to play. There were five of them and they were laughing and having fun even before they made it to the wood chips so obviously Jace wanted to be apart of the excitement. As they made it onto the playgrounds seesaw Jace quickly approached and asked if he could have a turn with them, but was met with instant rejection.
The rejections came in a string of...
"It's her, then him, then him, then her, and then we're going to go through that order again."
"Who are you?"
"Where's your mommy?"
"Why are you talking to us?"
"Let's just ignore him."
"Why are you still here?"
"Why are you talking to us?"
"We don't even know you"
Jace tried to no avail to answer their questions and to even offer new games to play but the rejection comments continued until my six year old ran off the playground and hid behind a tree to cry.
I sat not far from this encounter FUMING! I was so mad at these children for being so mean and for their parents not far in the grass oblivious to what was happening. But I didn't get involved.
Instead I calmly walked over to Jace hiding behind the tree and asked him if he was OK.
He cried and called the kids bullies. I held him and told him that they weren't bullies but they also weren't being very nice. I also told him that unfortunately when we play with kids they aren't always going to be nice and that if they don't want to play with him, he shouldn't want to play with them.
I then asked Jace if he wanted to go home. He told me he needed five more minutes of playing, then we could go.
He ran back to the play structure and started to approach those kids once again but then changed his mind and moved to a different part of the playground. He climbed and played for a few minutes then declared "OK Mama, it's time to go."
I've reminded Jace a few times since then about how it feels hear those mean words spoken to you and what it feels like to leave people out when you play. How when we play, we play with everyone. It's not always easy for a six year old to remember that.
I've never brought back up "if they don't want to play with you, you don't want to play with them", although I'm sure he won't forgot.
My son is very independent and strong willed and doesn't always like to be told no, but really who does? I want him to be a leader and lead by example, to be fair and to believe in himself and what he is doing. However in order for him to see the right and the fair and to know how to lead he has to experience some of those bad things that pains me, kills me as a parent because I want to make it all right for him.
So I will continue to stand back and stand off, letting him figure things out for himself. And when it's too hard and he cries or is hurt by that experience I'll be there to hug him and remind him to be good and kind.
It might kill me but I'll have to be extra strong for the both of us!
