follow-up: dig two graves

[metaphortunate]

Well, I feel the answer to the question of whether I told the Junebug the right thing has been swiftly answered, inasmuch as he hit another kid with a shovel today.

It's really great when the action-feedback loop is so immediate. Yes. That emotion I'm feeling is probably gratitude.

Anyway.

nihilistic_kid had a great suggestion, which was to kick the kick, not the kid. Which is really what I should have been getting at in the first place. It's okay to stop someone else from hurting you. It's not okay to hurt them in revenge: that just takes you down a path you don't want to go.

(I mean, iterated prisoner's dilemma is a thing, but he's too young for that.)

I also found it very interesting that there was a sharp divide between most people from California saying that tattling is absolutely the way to go, and people from everywhere else saying that no, you gotta fight back. This morning I asked my coworker with the older kids about it. She's from California. She said tattling all the way.

So! You have to know your local social norms. I will start emphasizing telling the teacher. We'll do some physical blocking practice. And we'll see how that goes.

-----

By the way, he's not being bullied, as far as I can tell. This is all...kids being physical, the way they do. Today one kid bit a teacher. These things happen.

It's hard because they're all learning with each other. When I was learning to pass clubs, I practiced with some other beginning jugglers, and I practiced with some expert jugglers. It was SO MUCH EASIER to pass with the expert jugglers! They throw clubs that are easy to catch! They caught all my garbage throws! All the kids are beginner human beings trying to learn how to human with other beginners. It's hard. This morning the Junebug mentioned his temporary tattoo that he got this summer. It lasted like a week, he loved that thing. But this morning he sadly asked me why all the other kids kept touching it when he didn't want them to.

"How many times have I told you to quit poking people on the bus?"

"SO MANY." Aggrieved expression. This clearly weighs on him.

"That's because you're still learning how to respect other people's boundaries. So are all the other kids! You have to be patient."

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

How old is he again, btw?

[metaphortunate]

3 and a half.

Harimad here

[(Anonymous)]

I forgot how young he is. I'd tell any 3.5 y.o. to tattle.

[princessofgeeks]

Yeah, with my kids it was all impulsiveness at that age. The ability to think things through came later. Hang in there.

[metaphortunate]

Yeah, I keep testing the waters on that and the waters keep saying "LOL no."

[tam_nonlinear]

My favorite moment with a kid that age was when I told my nephew he wasn't allowed to go into an ornamental fish pond and he, after considering my instructions for a moment, asked me "What about if I accidentally fell in?".

Meaning that they're often very good at figuring out how to interpret the rules in a way that works best for them, and not yet very good at figuring out how to foresee how others will view their actions. So while teaching little kids that they are allowed to defend themselves is a very important lesson, it's hard to get them to appreciate nuance. Nuance is tricky.

[metaphortunate]

ahahaha. I love that age when they are just so damn bad at being sneaky.

[norah]

Ahahaha the clubs analogy is BRILLIANT.

BEGINNER HUMANS. YES.

[rmc28]

Telling the teacher *seems* to be working at my son's school. (This was not entirely true of the schools I went to, but neither was it entirely social death.)

[metaphortunate]

Well, that's encouraging. Thanks!

[resolute]

It's possible that you need to moddify your instructions for local social norms, but I stand by my original assertion that people need to be aware that they have a RIGHT to defend themselves.

If they are actually under attack.

/o\

It's so tricky.

And over all of this hangs the specter of sexual harassment and sexual violence, and "why didn't you tell him to stop" and "why was she still smiling at him" and "I didn't know she was scared" and it turns into this parenting nightmare of what-if-ing.

[kate_nepveu]

Yeah. But it's asking a lot for a 3.5 year-old to handle those distinctions--I'm not sure I'd trust SteelyKid to do it properly, and she's a pretty smart 6.5.

m, I'm sorry it didn't work out, and I'm glad the feedback wasn't any more serious!

[metaphortunate]

Me too! See below for longer response.

[metaphortunate]

Ehh...he doesn't, though, is what I've concluded. The kids this young, they have a right to be defended. And eventually they will have a responsibility to defend themselves. In the same way as they have a right to have medical decisions made in their best interest, and eventually they will have the right and the responsibility to make their own best interests. But at this point they do not have the right to make their own medical decisions, because they're not mentally capable of doing it, and the consequences of them getting it wrong could be severe. After going through this little incident, I have now concluded that for this particular 3 1/2 year old, self-defense is the same way. He's not yet capable of doing it appropriately, and the consequences of getting it wrong could be severe. So I have the responsibility of defending him, and when I can't be around, I pass that responsibility on to the teachers, in the same way that I give them responsibility for finding out if he's sick and, say, taking him to the ER if necessary if they can't find me.

It is complicated by the fact that the kids are constantly testing each other, and also because I think he will take on this responsibility much more gradually than he will the medical stuff, which is kind of all or nothing. But I am okay with saying that currently his defense is not allowed to be up to him.

(and, of course, this is tempered by the fact that he should, and I do expect him to, break the rules in extremity. If he was such an obedient child that I thought he would not hit back no matter what, if it were forbidden, well, I would give him different rules. But in that case, he wouldn't have hit that kid with the shovel in the first place.)

[kate_nepveu]

This makes sense to me.

[snippy]

Hey, the schools here expected kids to tattle, I just told mine that no matter what the teachers said, if they weren't doing anything about it when my kids tattled, then they were to defend themselves and I would defend them from any action the school took against them for "failing to use the appropriate process," i.e., tell a teacher. Because they did tell teachers, and NOTHING EVER CHANGED. Teachers had no interest in making other kids stop being violent; it just puts the teacher at risk for discipline.

[metaphortunate]

Yeah, knowing what the local social norms are is vital! In this daycare - and I am talking about a 3 year old, remember - the teachers are interested in stopping violence, actually in a very endearing (and surprisingly good) hippie way. It's just a question of how many places they can be at once.

[cahn]

Beginner human beings! SO MUCH THIS. E has always had so many problems with other kids because they act unpredictably and weirdly and then if you get them in groups they act differently than they do individually and... Adults are so much easier!

E's also had this issue where we have to talk through her own behavior:
"Why does [classmate] keep [doing some socially inappropriate behavior] even though he's been told not to?"
"Well, do you sometimes yell and melt down even though you've been told not to?"
"Yes. But I don't do it so much anymore."
"Well, hopefully [classmate] will learn soon too. But remember it took you a while."

(I've also been thinking of your post a while back on giving your kids advice on interacting with adults vs. interacting with kids. I try to do both with E, but it's sooooo much harder giving her advice on interacting with other kids for much the same reason: adults mostly act according to rules and so you just have to make sure you're acting by the same rules, even if they're convoluted and don't make much sense! Kids... don't always act by the rules, and sometimes by random rules that don't make sense to adults! argh!)

[metaphortunate]

Yeah. I always think of Miles Vorkosigan in Komarr telling Nikolai that he's the agent that he's sending into the school. Because the kids are. We can't really know what's going on. They're the agents that we send in to find out. We'd better value and trust their intel.

[lovepeaceohana]

I also found it very interesting that there was a sharp divide between most people from California saying that tattling is absolutely the way to go, and people from everywhere else saying that no, you gotta fight back.

That does sound like a very California thing, yes. Then again, CA also wants me to keep my kids in carseats until they're something like eight years old and eighty pounds (or maybe it's ten years and one hundred pounds, now; it seems to go up every year), and CA is proudly leading the way in rates of opting out of vaccinating due to personal beliefs. :\

[metaphortunate]

Fuck, the carseat thing is driving me nuts. No wonder everyone has minivans.

[lovepeaceohana]

Right?! I mean I'm pretty sure I'll exceed whatever weight cap they set, but if they go in for height I'll probably end up in a booster seat or something, right along with my aunt and at least one cousin.

[starlady]

I've definitely just been given an important insight into the fundamental processes that make Californians different from the rest of the country.

Learning to be a human is so tough.

[lovepeaceohana]

I would be interested to hear this insight! *chin hands*