Mean Kids

A few weeks ago, we had an incident in the park. A child of no more than 5 years of age was playing on the gym equipment as AJ and I were going up and down the slide. This child didn't like AJ and right in front of me- spit on him. Hawked up a loogie and spit it on him. All the while looking right at me. I was floored. My motherliness almost overtook the teacherliness in me. Which in this case was the better choice. The motherliness wanted to spit back at the kid. Who spits at a BABY?

But in my best teacher voice, I said, "That is NOT OKAY. Do not spit at my baby." And I glared at him. He replied, "I can." I calmly said, "No, you can't." Kid: "I'm not made of nice." Me: (hearing that told me a lot about what this kid hears at home) "That's too bad." And the glare went on. He ran away.

Should I have said something different? Maybe. Should I have "Love and Logic"ed him? Perhaps. Maybe I should have gone over to his mother who was sitting on a bench chatting on a cell phone far from her child and had one of those conversations. But I said what I did and then thought about it all night.

AJ had no idea that a kid was mean to him. But someday he will know and someday it will hurt his feelings and he will learn that life lesson and I will not be there to help him. What makes me sad is that I see kids being mean to each other in little ways each day, and I do my best to heal wounds and patch up little fights with other people's children.

I hope I can do that when AJ is old enough and meets is next mean kid in the park.