8 November 2010, by Daphne Ling
How about you pick on someone your own size?
Tru had his first encounter with a bully a couple of days ago. He was at a playgroup with a bunch of other kids his age, running around and doing his kid thing while I was busy fiddling with my iPhone. I heard him crying so I ran over just in time to see him with this other boy who was almost a whole head taller than him grabbing both his hands real tight and making a nasty face at him.
In situations like these, I try not to overreact because a mother’s first instinct is to go kungfu ballistic on anyone that tried to hurt my kid. Also, all I saw was the goliath of a 2-year-old boy grabbing Tru’s hands and making a rude face, which in the grand scheme of things is not the same as giving Tru a sucker punch in the nose. So I guess that doesn’t warrant me having the boy quartered and hung. And eaten by horses.
I carried Tru to a corner to calm him down. He looked like he was in shock and the whole time, he just grabbed my top and wouldn’t stop crying. I tried asking him to tell me what the boy did but he refused to. He was obviously still visibly shaken so I didn’t want to push it.
From experience, the length of his crying time usually correlates with how badly affected he is. Like a mild stub on the toe warrants 10 seconds max and a bleeding mouth about 5 minutes. I can’t say for sure because I didn’t see it but I’m fairly certain that the other kid did a lot more than stick his tongue out at Tru. But of course, I’ve got no proof of that so I had to find some.
For the rest of the hour, I shadowed the big brattish bully to see him shoving other kids, snatching toys, pulling another kid’s hair and smacking a boy on the side of his head. He was smart, though. Barely 3-years-old and he’s got the instinct of a predator. He only made his move on the isolated kids, the stragglers who left the pack and the runts of the group. He would sneak up on a kid who was holding a toy he wanted, yank it out of his hands and push him away, all in 3 seconds. The poor kid would be left crying and he would skip off happily to find another kid to terrorize. One boy tried to grab his toy back only to have his head smacked like a rag doll.
I knew this day would come but I didn’t think it’d be this soon so I just didn’t know how to react. By the end of my little investigative exercise, I was down to two options. 1. Flog the living crap out of the kid and burn him with a cigarette but I didn’t have a cigarette so he got lucky and I had to go with 2. Talk to his parents. If it turned out that his parents were every bit as obnoxious as he was, then I would have to resort to 3. Force feed him enough laxatives to have him make the toilet all day, every day for the next month.
Good thing for him, his mom seemed genuinely appalled that her kid was such a bully and she apologized profusely. Apparently, she claims that her kid is not like that at all at home so I’m guessing he’s either got multiple personalities or she’s not spending enough time with the kid. Either way, at least she knows now.
Posted on : November 8, 2010
Filed under : New Mums & Dads
1 Comment
Celine
November 9th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Way to go, telling the mom about her son. Definitely, she needs to spend more time with him!