mommy etiquette?
Bear and I went to the playground yesterday. She made a beeline for the toddler swing, barely arriving before a mom and her young toddler who wanted to ride it. The Mom said to go ahead, so I pushed her a few times, then told her that since she is big enough to ride a regular swing, she needed to share and give the little boy a turn. She willingly agreed to get down and chose to head to the twisty slide. When she got to the top, another girl was climbing up the slide. I asked Bear to wait to go down until the other girl finished. The girl stayed put. I told her that other kids wanted to use the slide, too, and she needed to slide down. She climbed up. "Get out of my way!" she said to my daughter. She slid down again, and her friend also tried to cut in front of Bear. Meanwhile, Bear was astonished and frightened, near tears. The other girl was STILL on the slide. "You need to learn to share. Get down and give the other kids a turn." I told her in my "playground monitor" voice. Of course, it was too late for Bear. She had already turned around and ran to the steps. "Mommy, she scared me!" We proceeded to the big kid swings for a few minutes.
Normally, the other parents are around prompting their kids to use good manners. Apparently this 5-ish year old's Mom was too busy socializing to realize her daughter was a bully and slide hog. I half expected her, whoever she was, to come up and address me for scolding her child, but nope, no sign of any intervention of any type.
Later on, Bear decided to try again. The bully's friend was up there around the same time, and let my daughter go first. Bear looked at her as though she expected to be bullied again, but the girl insisted she have a turn. (Apparently her manners returned when the other girl was not around.) She managed to go down the slide successfully.
A few minutes earlier, I had just taught my almost 3 year old daughter to share her beloved swing with a younger child. Then, she waited her turn patiently at the slide, only to be scared by a slightly older kid who apparently didn't listen to the times her parents had tried to teach her playground etiquette.
So, when do you let kids work things out on their own, and when do you step in and "parent" other people's kids?
6 comments:
That is a hard one. I have to teach my two and half year olds in my class all the time. I am so sorry for Bear and your mommy heart.
Katie from WAH
Tough one. We had an interesting incident at the playground a week or so ago. There was a little Mennonite boy playing alone (about 3 or 4 years old) while his dad sold fruit on the other side of the small square where the play ground is. The boy was wild as a march hair. He would push past my kids, run to beat them to what ever toy they were headed to next, climbed up in the middle of the see-saw so they couldn't ride it, climbed up the slide while they were trying to slide down....it was not fun. His dad wasn't paying any attention to him at all.
I know this boy was adopted/is being fostered. I'm pretty sure it's been a fairly recent thing (they haven't had him since he was an infant). I've seen the family around town before & I think the boy may have some behavioral issues. I had to tell my kids to let him go & try to be nice. A few times I told him to play nicely, but it never phased him. He seemed so excited to have 4 kids to play with that he couldn't control himself. But at the same time, he really wanted to talk to me & help me with Bitsy.
The FarmHands were very frustrated & didn't know what to do. At one point the boy shoved past #1 Son to swing on a rope. #1 Son started to cry & yelled, "You are a very bad boy!" but the child never paused. On the way home I told them that sometimes kids don't behave the way they should and then it's their job to be as kind as possible...even if they don't want to.
Of course my kids are a bit older than Bear.
Eventually the boy's father came to check on him thinking he'd hurt #1 Son (who fell all by himself). He said, "I was worried. He can be a handful." I thought, then you should probably not let him run around so far away from you....
In my opinion you have to not only continue to teach your own kids but other also. I am always the mom at playgrounds who are scolding older children. I dont care how old anyone is. if my children is in danger or being scared for no good reason, i will say something.
GL!!
-h
stuff like that makes me soooo mad. mama bear wants to come out and save her cubs.
if the kid is being mean or pushing around another kid i usually say something. there are several problems with this. 1. mom and dad never cared enough about their child to teach them to do the right thing. 2. mom and dad never taught their child to respect adults, so the kid won't listen to you anyway. 3. mom and dad think their little child is perfect and therefore incapable of such behavior. so we try to teach the girls to have thick skin and walk away and feel sorry for the other child b/c their parents don't care about them enough to teach them to be kind. but the girls know they are allowed to stick up for each other if there is a bully pushing them around, and i'm not there to stop it.
I don't usually intervene unless J seems really upset. If she did I would probably request for the other kid to cooperate and if they did't then I would just take J and redirect her to something else. And we may talk about how it was not nice for the other kid to behave that way and discuss ways that we can be nice (maybe even loud enough so the other kid can hear).
We sort of had an incident like that about a month ago, except there was no actual confrontation. Anything that J would do, even if these kids were already playing with something else, if they saw her going for something they would try to rush and get it first. The younger kid was maybe 5 and the big sister had to be in at least 3rd grade. And she was the worst one! And the mom was just a few feet away and didn't say a thing. I mean, the girl would totally be in the middle of something else and quit what she was doing when she saw J going to something and try to get there first, whether it be balance beam, slide, whatever. With smaller kids it doesn't bother me as much, but 3rd grade? Are you SERIOUS? I think this was her bizarre way of trying to play WITH people. There were 4 other swings available and she tried to cut J off for the one she was going to. It was that obvious. When she didn't make it to that one (DH actually made a point to get there with J first this time cause he was getting sick of it) the girl got in the swing as close to J and DH as she could and every now and then she'd try to do stuff for attention, like loose her shoe on purpose and whine about it like she wanted us to get it even though her mom was pretty much as close as we were. It was so weird. Serious attention issues. So yeah, DH and I were frustrated but we tried not to show it too much to DD because I don't know if she really noticed too much. Sometimes if she REALLY cut us off(like running into us) we would be polite in her place and say excuse me, etc.
Thankfully we really haven't had any playground issues. Most often it's been telling a friend's son or daughter to take turns or what not so it's not strange b/c in our little group we all feel comfortable instructing each other's children.
I have a friend who's really good about speaking up and I'm sure she would say something to the "offender". I however, would probably just try to move away with my daughter and make sure she acts kindly. Maybe if the "offender's" parent were near by I wouldn't say anything but if s/he weren't I might say something to the child about taking turns or being kind. I guess too it would depend on how annoyed I got with the "offender" or how offending they were being.
Hum, I don't really know why I put "offender" in quotes.
It's been interesting reading the other comments too.
Post a Comment