“P” stands for Preschool, Predator and Parenting

One of the hardest parts of any large-scale move—like ours from Christmas Island last year to Idaho—is waving goodbye to one set of friends and having to make another.

The internet cushions the blow for adults; we’re still in email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc., contact with our friends from the Old Life.

But there are fewer such options for 5-year-olds. Fortunately, most 5-year-olds are still pretty resilient to this sort of thing (very little Big Picture thinking developed yet); ours sure has been.

Still, we’ve taken pains to make sure he’s as well-socialized as a sensitive, only-child kid in a strange land can be. We haven’t observed any kids The Boy’s age in the neighborhood where we live, and the kids in his prechool are drawn from all over the city.

So we’ve arranged a few “playdates” with kids in his class that he has expressed an interest in seeing outside of school. None have really come to much so far, but the latest one was a real eye-opener.

The kid in question, we’ll call him Dallas, and The Boy seemed to be great friends at school so we set up a play date at a local indoor kids’ climbing emporium. It’s like a cubicled, 3-story climbing structure the length of a warehouse, with all kinds of cool nooks and crannies and slides.

So the boys ran off together, and I sat down with Dallas’s guardians to BS the time away. They were obviously the tot’s grandparents, and eventually revealed that Dallas’s parents have some substance issues that they were still addressing, which is why their grandson lives with them.

About this time, some kid starts screaming and crying from the depths of the Borg-like play labyrinth. But I figure with all the kids there, it’s statistically unlikely that the crying kid is mine. I am proved wrong about a minute later when my poor son came running up to the adult’s lounge, crying, saying that Dallas had been jumping up and down on him in one of the small, square rooms and wouldn’t stop. In a hot second, Dallas came running up behind him. I waited for his grandparents to question the child about The Boy’s allegations, but when it became clear they were not going to, I interceded.

Me: Were you jumping up and down on The Boy?

Dallas: (eyes down) Yes.

Me: Did he ask you to stop?

Dallas: Yes.

Me: Did you stop?

Dallas: No

Me: Why not? Couldn’t you tell you were hurting him?

Dallas: [pause] I don’t know.

Anyhow, The Boy seemed willing to forgive and forget, so they went off and played another 90 minutes, no problem. I was leery at first, but it seemed to be an isolated incident. So before we went our separate ways, we made a playdate for the next weekend, at their house.

The next weekend came and the playdate seemed to go fine. The grandparents were very nice and their house very grandparenterly. The boys sequestered themselves away in his bedroom and began making an awful racket with an electronic drum kit some sadist had given Dallas.

Three hours later, we’re driving home and I ask The Boy how it went. Everything was fine, he said, except that while they were in the bedroom near the beginning, Dallas hit him repeatedly on the head with a plastic hammer till he cried. Alarmed, I asked The Boy why he didn’t come out and tell me, and he told me Dallas talked him out of it.

So when I got home, I wrote the kid’s grandparents about the incident. I wrote, in part:



I’m as concerned about the fact that every playdate seems to include Dallas assaulting The Boy as I am the fact that Dallas is savvy enough, after the incident at the play emporium, to talk The Boy out of telling on him this time.



I think future playdates are going to require a lot more direct supervision. It’s not good for The Boy to think that friends are people who hit you till you cry, and obviously, it’s not ideal that Dallas acts out violently with his playmates, then talks them into covering it up. As his guardians, I thought you should know.


When we didn’t hear back all week, we didn’t mind; we had already decided to cancel the next weekend’s playdate. Then today, they finally responded, in part:

Regarding the behavior of the boys: We believe that it is important for them to work out their differences without too much supervision or intrusion as this is what happens in life and is important in their maturing. We have never had problems with Dallas being “assaulting” or “violent” no reports from the school or other play mates. And we’ve not had him reported as being “covert”



Somehow, I generated enough common sense to not write them back while angry, but I did forward their comments to The Missus and added my own remarks:

We believe that it is important for them to work out their differences without too much supervision or intrusion as this is what happens in life and is important in their maturing



This strikes me as crazy when applied to a pair of 5-year-olds, plus as I recall, their batting average at raising well-adjusted kids isn’t very fucking good. I begin to understand why.



We have never had problems with Dallas being “assaulting” or “violent” no reports from the school or other play mates
. And we’ve not had him reported as being “covert”
 


You suppose they never hear about their grandkid’s predations because he intimidates his victims into clamming up?



This shit pisses me off, but I’m more concerned that The Boy may be developing a personality that draws him to abusive assholes. If he is, assholes will seek him out.

The Missus suggested I talk to his preschool teacher when I went to pick him up later in the day.

Which I did. I laid it all out for her, and said, “I don’t give a damn about the other kid, but I am concerned that The Boy may be developing a victim personality.” He’s shy and relatively non-violent by nature (for a little boy), and I was afraid assholes were already beginning to target him.

She assured me that The Boy was fine, so I stopped her and said, “Look, you know what the world is like out there. There are predators and there are prey. Looking around this classroom, would you say you see warning signs in any of these kids?” I was afraid she was just telling me what I wanted to hear.

Her eyes went wide, and her voice lowered and she said, “Oh no.” Then she got even more confidential. “Dallas treats everyone that way. He’s a constant problem. Your son isn’t afraid to express displeasure or let us know when he sees something wrong going on, either with him or with another child.”

This was a great relief. We’ve worked a lot on a couple of simple ideas; one is “People are more important than things” and the other is “Evil succeeds when good people do nothing.” And he already knows all about Good and Evil from as constant a stream of superhero cartoons as he can talk us into. He can tell a Bad Guy’s entrance by his theme music! I was proud he wasn’t letting bullying happen on his watch.

Anyhow, the teacher went on to say several other complimentary things about The Boy not germane to this report, but which made me feel great. (Hint: He is not stupid—yay! It skipped a generation!)

His teacher went so far as to name another little boy in his class, one without behavioral issues, that The Boy plays with a lot, as a suitable possible replacement for his abusive former sidekick. We’ll be slipping his parents a note next week.

And as soon as that worry passed—about my son being a doormat in training—a new one took its place. Why the hell is he drawn to bad kids? I was hoping that, too, would skip a generation. Damn it!

But that is a heartache for another day. Today, at least, I feel like the Good Guys won one.