The World: 1, Sweetness: Zero

Our son is officially the sweetest kid I’ve ever known.

And no, that’s not working out well for him at school. Not at all. Not even in Kindergarten.

He might as well be the new Amish kid in Silicon Valley.

There is an innocent quality about him that has already made him a vector for schoolyard abuse. Worse, he hasn’t even started to draw the bullies’ attention yet, just his “friends.”

Friday, when I picked him up from school, he reported glumly that no one played with him all day. Usually he doesn’t have much to say on the ride home, but he volunteered this. With a little prodding, he went on to reveal that after a spat over lining-up with a female classmate, they got into a physical confrontation; he used the word “karate” to describe the fight. Worse, he reported that she was better at karate than he was. There was crying [him], there was adult intervention, and all the kids lining up must have seen it. During the next recess he got into another altercation, which reportedly began with a verbal exchange of unknown nature. He said the other boy, whom I also know to be a generally decent kid, hit and kicked him repeatedly, including punching him in the crotch with the expected result. We asked if the other kid could have thought they were engaging in roughhouse play, or whether he thought he was trying to make him sad [had malicious intent], and The Boy indicated the latter.
 


He’s normally a pretty happy kid. Over the past week he has been reluctant to go to school, and now The Missus and I understand why.

Of course, we’re only hearing one side of the story, but our kid embellishes less than most. And when he does, it’s usually the kind of wild flights of fancy that even his peers can see through (The Boy: “I can control people’s minds!” Bored friend: “Oh yeah? Control mine.”)… and cue the abuse.

But lying to deceive? Nope. The same innocence that is getting his ass handed to him on the playground also makes him a pretty reliable witness, even where his own interests are concerned.
 


We talked to him again tonight about why kids might be mean to him when he considers himself such a nice kid. We reminded him it’s not his fault, but said there are things he can do to diminish the possibility of verbal and physical altercations. Specifically, we talked about confidence, which is something he sorely lacks on the playground, and he expressed a proactive interest in taking another run at Taekwondo--not to gain any potential fighting skills, but [my paraphrase here and I may be embellishing] for confidence-building and to learn to deal assertively but non-violently with his peer group. To make the inevitable pack have to turn their attention to the next poor schmuck. And maybe be straight enough in his own head to befriend his unlucky successor, and give him or her a smoother ride than he got.



But between now and then, the rough ride is going to be his. Yet despite the fact that this has been suddenly brought to his attention, he continues to try to make nice with his tormenters.

For instance? One former “friend” who has been particularly mean to him lately walked with us for a way on the other side of the chain link fence as we left school Friday, then spun around and leaned his back against the fence and folded his arms when The Boy tried to say goodbye. Pretty dick-move, right? The Boy called out “Bye!” to him anyhow and blew him a kiss. A while later I asked why he did that if the kid was being mean to him, and he looked at me with sad, confused eyes, “I wanted to make him feel good.”

Before he told me this, my brain was filling in the likely answer… “I wanted him to like me” or “I wanted him to be my friend,” some variation of that. When he said what he said, it blew my mind. It’s gonna be tough keeping all that sweetness intact under the toughened outer layer he needs to develop.


But Taekwondo starts Tuesday and as soon as I’m done writing this, I’m going to find the information for the community gymnastics program that apparently I had a month ago and lost, and enroll him in it, too.


We are going to fix this. He is not going to repeat The Missus and my lifetime of playground ignominies. One particularly dodgy year, the biology teacher let me stay in his class during lunch for a semester and work on poster projects for his walls, in order to protect me from bullies.*

This will not be my son’s fate.

I was so worried when I let him bail on his first crack at martial arts, maybe a year-and-a-half ago. I knew he should have stuck with it, but didn’t want to make martial arts a “thing” between us the way Little League was with me and my Dad. Not having made a “thing” of it, now that he needs something like that, he’s happy to give it another try.

Goooooooooooooooooooooooooal!

We’ve got our work cut out for us, but now that The Boy is on the same page as we are and is finally engaged, I expect big things. When he gets determined, things get done. Taught him to tie his shoelaces in ten or fifteen minutes this weekend. And there’s not much like getting karate-ed by a girl and punched in the nuts by a boy within an hour of each other to make even a six-year-old take a closer look at the path he’s on. He’s stubborn, but not intransigent.

Parent/teacher/kid conference coming up this week. Didn’t think it would start this soon, but in a way, I’m glad it did. It may still be early enough to repair his reputation, which will be important if he ends up going to this school for any length of time.

I remember being sensitive like him as a kid, and now I’m remembering why I stopped.

~Fang


* In my defense, I had misguidedly antagonized the bullies first by portraying unfortunately dead-on caricatures of them demonstrating clearly effeminate mannerisms in the school newspaper’s comic strip, but at the time, I thought this was still America!