You did a great job mom! Someone actually said that to me in the park yesterday. My daughter was hysterical claiming that some other kid had hurt her. I didn’t see it because I was busy pushing her younger brother on the swing.
She was hurt. She was angry. She was after revenge. She wanted the other little girl to pay. As she described what happened it did sound like the girl was a little rough and mean. But before I let myself get swept away in my child’s hurt, I remembered that there were probably two sides of the story, so I took a different approach.
First I made sure that her arm felt better. Cradling it in my hand seemed to do the trick. Then we had a long talk about how sometimes it’s an accident when people get hurt. I shared my own embarrassing story of kicking a soccer ball that accidentally hit another girl in the stomach so hard that she had to be carried off the field. It was obviously an accident, but I still feel bad about it.
I also reminded her of the time her brother got in trouble for biting his friend. When we asked him about it later, he shared that his friend was lying on top of him suffocating him and ignoring his pleas to move. The only way he could get him to move was by biting him. After I talked her off the ledge, I encouraged her to go talk to the other child herself, not going on the attack, but rather letting her know what happened and what she needed from the other girl to make it better. Before I knew it, they were playing together again.
I can’t speak for my daughter, but I learned a valuable lesson.. not to automatically side with my child.
The Benefit of Not Siding with Your Child
You did a great job mom! Someone actually said that to me in the park yesterday. My daughter was hysterical claiming that some other kid had hurt her. I didn’t see it because I was busy pushing her younger brother on the swing.
First I made sure that her arm felt better. Cradling it in my hand seemed to do the trick. Then we had a long talk about how sometimes it’s an accident when people get hurt. I shared my own embarrassing story of kicking a soccer ball that accidentally hit another girl in the stomach so hard that she had to be carried off the field. It was obviously an accident, but I still feel bad about it.
I also reminded her of the time her brother got in trouble for biting his friend. When we asked him about it later, he shared that his friend was lying on top of him suffocating him and ignoring his pleas to move. The only way he could get him to move was by biting him. After I talked her off the ledge, I encouraged her to go talk to the other child herself, not going on the attack, but rather letting her know what happened and what she needed from the other girl to make it better. Before I knew it, they were playing together again.
I can’t speak for my daughter, but I learned a valuable lesson.. not to automatically side with my child.