I never cease to be amazed at how different children, even siblings, can be. As the Kindergartener starts school this year, we have the typical concerns… Will she like it? Will she make good friends? Will she learn to write lower-case letters {even though she refuses to do so at home}? But, we don’t worry at all about her getting in trouble there for disobeying the teacher or getting into a dispute with another child. While she can be blatantly disobedient and bouncing-off-the-walls hyper at home, she just doesn’t have it in her to act out in that way at school. And, she generally shies away from any type of interpersonal conflict in a public setting. She has enough of that typical first-born desire to please in her to give us a general sense of ease about her social conduct.
However, our middle child, the Preschooler {formerly referred to as “the Toddler”}… is wired differently.
Just this summer she has had two incidents that give us reason to think we may be frequent attendees at parent-teacher conferences in the future if her personality doesn’t mellow a bit before her own kindergarten days.
The first incident was at a local children’s museum where another little girl was {allegedly} not playing very nicely at the toy train table. I was not on the scene at the time, but the Spouse was an eye witness to the whole scuffle. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say ~ what began with a simple dispute over one of the trains, ended with the other little girl and the Preschooler growling back and forth at each other. {And prior to the growling they were sticking their tongues out at and spitting at each other}. Since the little girl’s parents were nowhere to be found, the Spouse wisely created a diversion and removed the Preschooler from the table just in time to prevent a more major scene… like us being escorted out the back door of the museum by security.
The second incident happened just last week on the Chick-fil-a playground. Once again there was another little girl who {allegedly} kept shoving herself in front of the Preschooler on the way up the slide and then blocking her from sliding down. This particular Chick-fil-a has an enclosed play structure, so we weren’t privy to the conversations going on inside the tunnel, but we knew it wasn’t going well when we heard the Preschooler’s voice escalating and saw her mumble something to the effect of, “She’s just a nasty little girl.”
This is unacceptable.
And, mind-boggling.
The thing I have in common with the Kindergartener is that while we both get into our share of battles at home, we care way too much about image maintenance to get into any sort of public altercation. When out and about, we generally try NOT to draw attention to ourselves. The Preschooler, however, cares far more about justice. She will not stand for mistreatment, no matter where she is. And, let me just tell you… she may be short, but she can hold her own.
We have absolutely no idea what to do with this attitude.
All we can do is continue to discipline, continue our talks about what is and is NOT appropriate social behavior, and continue to remind her that sometimes it’s better to ignore rude behavior than fight it.
So, we’ll see how that goes…
We have a long way to go in learning how to best deal with her temperament and help her manage her emotions.
All we know for sure right now is that chocolate ice cream never fails to be a good antidote for her stress.
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