So it’s no surprise that, sponges as they are, our kids pick up behaviors and language from their friends as well. My Pie goes to a wonderful day care and I am so happy she’s making lots of friends. She bonds equally well with boys and girls, which is good, and I know all of her friends by name.
Lately, she’s been talking about one particular girl in particular. We’ll call her “Girl X.” When we got into the car to go to school the other day, she exclaimed, “Booger nose!” and broke into a fit of laughter.
I just looked at her for a minute. Before I could say anything, she says “Girl X and I say that at school.” I suggested that wasn’t a terrific thing to say and asked whose idea it was to say that. Predictably, she blamed Girl X. I let it go for the moment.
Another day, she informed me that she and Girl X had told another kid to “shut up.” This definitely wasn’t something she heard around our house but I’m not surprised she picked it up elsewhere. Of course, I told her that was not a nice thing to say and I expected her not to say it anymore.
Her response: “Well, Girl X says it.” Now, it could be equally true that Anna initiated this and Girl X played along. But this gave me a perfect opening for the “if someone jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” lesson.
“Anna,” I said, “Just because a friend is doing something doesn’t mean you have to do it too, especially if it’s a bad choice.”
Clearly, this was a completely revolutionary idea to her.
It shouldn’t have been, though. We’ve had similar conversations about things such as (unfortunately) smoking. Anna has relatives who smoke, and we’ve had to tell her, even while one of them is outside having a cigarette, that cigarettes are bad and you shouldn’t smoke.
It occurred to me that in a child’s mind, it must be hard to reconcile the fact that you care for someone with the fact that they do something that’s not so good. If you like someone and look up to them, of course you want to emulate them. We're working on that.
On another occasion, I arrived at day care to pick Anna up, only to find her and Girl X leading another boy around the playground. One of them had him by his arm and the other one had his shirt. He looked like a prisoner being carted off to his cell. And he certainly didn’t seem thrilled about this.
After all, at that age, girls are still super yucky.
Then I wondered: are Anna and Girl X heading up some toddler gang of ruffians that are taking over the playground? I’ve always known Anna would be a tough girl because of her physical strength and brashness, but I don’t want her to be a bully.
Perhaps I was ascribing unwarranted evil intent to a couple of little kids, but I wasn’t going to just let it pass. I walked over and told Anna to stop, because her friend wasn’t enjoying it. She protested and I led her away, leaving the poor boy in the clutches of Girl X.
I suppose the parts of the brain that process incongruous thoughts aren’t completely developed at this early age. So, I’ll try not to have unrealistic expectations, but I don’t want my kid to be the Playground Enforcer either.
This will be one of the harder lessons to fully impart until she’s old enough that her reasoning skills are more sophisticated, I get that. But darn it, I’m gonna keep trying, before she starts making the other kids offers they “can’t refuse.”
No comments:
Post a Comment