Weenie Punching

Conflict Resolution as a child can be heavy stuff.   My son and daughter have been getting better and better at it as they’ve grown and gotten more experience.   Sometimes though, negotiations fail and physical means are employed.   That’s when someone ends up crying.   It’s also when my husband or me get called in to referee.

We try to let the children, including their neighbor friends, work things out for themselves, giving them guidance where possible.   This afternoon there were some children in our back yard.   Two of them were our neighbors but two I didn’t know.   My son recognized them as visiting children from another day and told me immediately how he didn’t want to go play with them.    Eventually he did though and I got to work on some things of mine until a short while later when he came in doing that cry thing where the child is so upset they can barely cry.   The “snuffles” I think I heard it called once.

My son was hurt because he’d been punched rather soundly in the ribs by, “the yiddle guy” of the two new friends outside.   When I asked what had happened while my son calmed down I was told I needed to “go outside right now and spank that kid ten times”.   I told my son I didn’t think that would help but maybe if he told me what happened I could understand better.

He told me how he didn’t like this boy because he did <insert thing my son didn’t like> so my son pulled him by the leg.    This child then hit my son, which my son didn’t like so my son said, “then I punched him in the weenie.”   I said, “I see, then what happened?”   The other child was using the Quiddich hoops in some way my son didn’t like and then he hit my son and cut his hand…so my son pushed him…and then the other child punched him in the ribs hard enough to send my son in crying, ending the interaction.

I was a little surprised at this very physical reaction and anger but sometimes things happen.    It wasn’t until a little bit later that I looked outside and watched what was going on with the remaining children.   I saw this child jerk the swing and kick my daughter out of it rather violently.   I watched my daughter look stunned and move on.    I saw a few other things I didn’t expect to see behaviorally, knowing how our neighbor children have good maturity and conflict management skills.  

It was a few minutes later that Keira came to the door to tell my son goodbye.   She had been the one who’d brought him inside when he got punched and was hurt.    She told him she didn’t like playing with that other boy either and would see him tomorrow.    I told my son violence wasn’t a good solution but I understood it was a difficult day and we all had them sometimes.

The Big Boy Update:  The best punishment my son came up with to exact on the little boy he didn’t like from the back yard this afternoon was, “mom, can you make a potion and give it to that boy and when he takes it he’ll be old so when it’s his birthday he’s so old he’ll die.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son and daughter were playing together yesterday.   My son has been recently both the retro game Sonic the Hedgehog as well as a show featuring the same characters.   I don’t know what game they were playing but I heard my daughter tell him, “okay, I’ll call you ‘Sonic’ but not ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’”.