Fighting the Bullies, My Sons

  After a hectic day full of mommy frustrations, I experienced one of my darkest parenting moments to date. All day I had fought with the boys, particularly Henry (4), about every single basic routine that is in our day. Time to get dressed, time to go, time to clean, you name it, the boys refused to do it. We met Keith for a rushed dinner and I actually cried in the restaurant telling him about it. How am I supposed to raise these boys if they don't listen to me? 

  I will give you some background information for the story I am about to tell. Recently, Gavin and Henry have been playing with a new friend. This boy is closer to Gavin's age (5) and enjoys doing everything he can to exclude and put Henry down. Henry often comes to me crying about what is happening but he still wants to play. Henry has experienced the hurt feelings resulting from being treated this way and Gavin has experienced the social high of being associated with the "top dog."

  I do not blame this other boy for the behavior of my sons. Every time my boys try to give me a "but he..." excuse, I say, "You are in charge of you." I do think that this recent history is a part of the bigger story. Gavin and Henry have experienced new social behavior and were acting out this behavior in order to experiment socially, and to better understand new experiences and emotions. Or maybe they were just being bullies because they are mean boys.

  As parents, I think we always try to figure out where the negative behavior  our children display comes from. We don't want to believe that our children are really capable of being or doing [fill in the blank] on their own. We blame things like TV or too much sugar, or not enough sleep, or absent fathers, or friends who are bad influences. We hate to admit that our children are solely responsible for their misbehavior, especially if such misbehavior points to a perceived character flaw, or our own failures as parents. 

  Following the tear-filled spilling of frustrations over dinner, Keith went to fix a plumbing problem at our rent house while I took the boys to a park with a splash-pad. During our time there, Henry sat in time out twice. Once for spitting mouthfuls of water at another boy, and once for wandering out of the play area and ignoring my calls for him to come back. I decided that we would leave if he did anything else. I have a "Three strikes and you're out" policy. It's very reasonable. I would love to have a one strike policy but that would make me a tyrant.

  I quickly assessed a new family that had arrived. The adult was an older man who gave me the creeps, too much smiling. I wondered if he was there by himself but he appeared to be with a boy who was about 3. I watched Everly closely but glanced up at the rest of the splash pad frequently. At one point I heard crying and quickly looked at my boys. They were behind a water shooter and both looked happy. I went back to watching Everly until I heard more crying. When I looked again my boys were just as they had been, both aiming the water shooter and both happy. The boy who was crying was darting back and forth while my boys followed him with the stream of water. I wondered if he was actually laughing but then he just crouched on the ground and covered his head. All the while my two boys were together gleefully harassing him with the stream of water. The boy was trying to runaway but never ran far enough to get away from the water. After trying several different directions he was panicking. I frantically called for them to stop as the boy's grandpa (or whoever he was) laughingly went to pick him up.

   I called my boys to me. I couldn't believe what I had just seen. That little boy was in pure distress. I hoped that Gavin and Henry didn't realize what they were doing. I hoped that they had thought that the boy was playing with them. I hoped that they had not known that he was upset and continued to spray him. They walked over. Gavin was working up a serious face, Henry was working up an innocent face. I quizzed them about what happened.

"Were you spraying that boy?" 

"Yes." 

"Was he trying to run away?" 

"Yes." 

"Did he want you to stop?" 

"Yes." 

"Did you know he was crying?"

"Yes."

"And you sprayed him anyway?"

"Yes."

  

They knew exactly what they were doing. There was no mistake. "Get your things. We are leaving." I said through my teeth. "Get. Your. Things." Henry dawdled the whole way and I was fuming. I thought I was going to explode. I was saying to myself things like "Just you wait until we get to the car." And "I'm going to light their asses on fire." Light their asses on fire? Really? What was I saying? I wanted to spank them so hard that their little bottoms stung and burned. I have never said that before. I don't even know anyone who talks like that. Why was I thinking like that? I wanted them to cower and cry like they had made the little boy at the park cower and cry. I wanted to yell some sense into them and make them sorry because they didn't seem to be sorry.

  I buckled everyone in. I had to work really hard to control myself and not spank them. I knew that if I did it would be too harsh. I also knew that spanking them was the exact wrong way to teach them not to bully and hurt others. If I spanked them until they cried I would be doing to them what they had done to the poor boy. I knew that punishing them with a spanking would probably encourage more bullying in the future, because the next time they had an opportunity to be bigger and more powerful than another that they would try to use that power to hurt as they had been hurt. I said some stern words, got in the car, and turned on worship music. Really loud. I said "Lord, help me." Over and over again.

  How will I punish them? What can I do that will be serious enough? A time-out won't be severe enough and a spanking will do more harm than good. I looked back at them. They were serious. I said "Boys, that was very wrong to spray that boy even though he was crying and trying to get away. We need to have a serious consequence. When we get home, even though it's too early for bed, you are going to bed. You cannot play or do anything else when we get home. You will go straight to bed." "And get up after our time-out is over?" Gavin asked. "No. We will put jommies on and brush teeth and go to bed. It's an early bed time, you won't get up until morning." I replied. "Oh. Because we were so naughty?" He asked, and looked out the window. "Yes. That was very wrong to treat that boy the way you did."

  I texted Keith to let him know what was happening. I didn't want him to come back home and get them out of bed. When we pulled in the driveway, I noticed that the toys were still in the yard from earlier. Normally, I would have asked the boys to clean up, but I decided to keep this solemn and follow through to get them down quickly. I put them in the shower and was all business. I didn't let them play at all just soap and rinse and done. They were serious by now, the gravity of the situation was sinking in. After they got in bed they said they were hungry. I told them they had had a good dinner and needed to just go to bed now. I questioned myself about that but told myself that they had eaten well at dinner and would survive until morning.

  Everly and I played downstairs and Keith came home just as I was starting her bedtime. He had read my text. He was serious and didn't try to go in to see the boys. I was so relieved. In our house Daddy is Mr. Fun so he would have ruined things if he had gone in their room. He couldn't believe the story and was respectful of the way I had handled it. 

  I couldn't stop questioning myself. Had I done enough? Did the boys really understand? Was sending then to bed early an effective way to teach them not to bully others in the future? I was ashamed of myself too. I had raged against my boys. I cried myself to sleep as I wondered how to follow up on this in the morning. I had to talk with them about it some more. I had to make sure that they really understood.

  In the morning, I was still so sad. I wanted us to have a good day but first we had to take care of business. The idea of journaling came to me. I decided to have them journal by drawing pictures about what had happened. I made scrambled eggs and toast. After breakfast, I sent them out to jump on the trampoline. They already had energy to burn and I knew that the journaling would be more successful if they got their wiggles out first. When they were done, I called them to the table and told them what we were going to do. Neither one complained. Both were appropriately solemn and attended to the task.

  I took a piece of paper and folded it in half making two sections on each side. I wrote the journal prompts in each of the four sections and instructed them to draw the following pictures.

The first one was "What happened?" I gave no extra instructions. These pictures are Gavin's. Henry did well too but his work is not as clear as Gavin's so I am not showing it here. The words in black ink are Gavin's dictated captions.

"I was spraying a little boy and he was crying." Notice that he drew himself much larger that the other boy.

  The little boy felt sad.

"When I hurt others, I feel sad."

"I could make it better by hugging."

I left the lesson at that. I think they got it.

I will definitly be using this type of journaling in the future. I don't have to wonder if they understand because they represented each part perfectly through their drawings. If necessary, we can bring these out and look at them again. Unlike the night before, I felt closure after each boy drew their pictures and we were able to move on. I thanked God for giving me patience and wisdom.

  We went through our morning school routine and packed a lunch for the park and splash pad, a different one. "What's with the splash pads?" You ask? Well, they close after this week and I want to squeeze every last drop out of this summer that we possibly can. In a few weeks (or one week), when summer is fading and splash pads and pools are closed, I don't want to regret not taking full advantage of the summer and the fun of cool water.