This afternoon Squidge and I went to the park. She rode her bike and I trotted along beside her making sure she doesn’t fall down. She falls down even with her training wheels/stabilizers. We got to the park and to say she was happy well that would just be wrong she was EXCITED!!! She got to ride her bike AND she was at the park– WOOT!!!
Squidge is running around, playing on everything. She’s calling out to me and chatting away like she usually does. After a while she goes up to a girl and say’s HI! I’m Squidge and I’m a girl just like you. The girl just stares at her. SO she says it again and adds and I have long hair like you. we’re both girls. Again that stupid nasty piece of crap(SNPoC) just stares at my little girl. My three yr old who is just trying to be nice and make friends. Squidge repeats herself a few times and the girl never ever says anything. Finally I just called her over and we played something else. The entire time we were there this SNPoC just stood there staring at her whenever Squidge said anything to her. She had a friend w/ her who was going to play w/ Squidge but SNPoC kept calling her saying she had a secret. At one point Squidge wanted to play on the swings but SNPoC was on them so I told her she had to wait. Finally SNPoC got off the swings and when I was certain she wasn’t going back I told Squidge she could play on them. Just as I said that SNPoC’s head whipped toward me and then she ran to the swings. I wanted to slap that girl and take her to her mom. I was crushed. I KNOW girls are mean but this girl was only a couple of yrs older than Squidge. Please tell me they’re not SNPoC by 5 these days.
We ended up going home as I was miserable watching Squidge being treated badly by this kid. I know this is going to happen. It happens all the time. It was just tough to see. How would you have handled this?
Oh blimey — hard one cos I won’t be in that position.
Choice of 2, depending on park location and whether I would be going back.
a) More or less what you did
b) Tell SNPoC that she’s a rude, ignorant fecker and I hope she falls off. (Have done something like this before now)
well… seeing that I have no children… and my only experience is working at a school with tons of those SNPoC’s… I would explain to Squidge in little-girl terms.. that she will encounter many of these social idiots throughout her life and that she probably doesn’t want to play with them anyway. What a freakin jerk.. Squidge is so friendly and gets along so well with kids… the hell with that biatch.. her loss anyways! Sorry I know I went a little PG-13 on this,but it pisses me off! Hope you are well and I wish you guys lived here! I tagged you on some FB pics from the birthday party that she went to.. she was a big hit as you can tell.. love you!
Hmmm at first I was thinking maybe SNPoC was just painfully shy!! Caitlin just stands and stares if any “very scary” people/kids speak to her!!!! In fact she completely freezes!! BUT if she then kept calling her friend over to say she had a secret that is deliberately outing her so yeah she is a SNPoC!!!!!!!! I’d have done what you did and just move away and yeah tell her they are mean and not to be like that and she doesn’t want to play with them anyway!!!
Maryann rawks! Take her advice and run with it (although not in quite the same words).
The boy is very much the same as Squidge — he sees another kid and instantly wants to make friends. Luckily, I’ve found, most kids seem to respond quite well. When that doesn’t happen, you just have to encourage them to find friends elsewhere.
I have boys so am lucky to not really have encountered this. However, I would probably start playing a really loud, silly game with my child to distract him as well as to show that SNPoC that my child is a lot of fun and how very dare she be so rude!
sadly, I started to see this last year with Chloe. I think 3–4 it rears it’s ugly head and then somewhat subsides. We have friends who each have a daughter Chloe’s age that spend 24/7 together and were really not nice to Chloe for most of last year. It seems to have gotten a little better, but I think that’s because they’re all in the same school together and the teachers hammer home being nice to your friends. A real bummer though.
My dearest, oldest friend Lindy. As far as the swings go, with the girl running back and taking over, this has happened to the girls at the park alot. I used to just allow and even tell my girls to walk away however, I will admit to you that recently, I have told them not to allow kids to walk all over them if they are waiting for the swings and someone rudely cuts them off, etc. that they need to say something to that child and stand up for themselves. I know many parents will not agree with me but sorry, I’ve had my fill of ignorant parents raising ignorant children. Some of these children probably don’t even realize they are being complete a–holes because nobody ever lets them know.
And so you know, if I ever see either of my girls cutting someone or being rude or mean, they are severely reprimanded. Kids do dumb things but it is definitely the parents job to let them know it!