Lord of the Slides

Anyone who says people are naturally "good" has never watched a playground with unsupervised kids. Or forgot all about Junior High. Either way I watched sin nature in the hearts of children run rampant yesterday.

We have a small park super close to our house, the girls ride their bikes, Brian and I walk the dog and sit and chat while the kids imagine the day away.

Well being spring break, I took the girls in the middle of a glorious day. It was sunny and warm and perfect.  When we got to the park there were 3 kids, siblings, already there.  To which I thought, sweet Serena has more friends now.  She has only 2 rules for kids at the park to become her newest friends:
1. Be at the park.
2. Be a kid.
If you fit into those categories you are her newest bestie. Chloe also follows these rules. BUT the other kids, played by a different set of rules.  Apparently they owned the playground, and anyone new who showed up was the enemy.  The middle child, a boy, kept saying "come on it's 3 against 2!" to his oldest sister.  If my girls rode their bikes, THEY rode their bikes.  If my girls headed to the swings that boy darted off to beat them and his older sister soon followed.  The youngest sister kinda followed along, but she also seemed more interested in my dog than the game.

I did what I usually do; stay out of it.  My girls need to learn how to navigate social situations of all kinds by themselves.  By that I don't mean that I won't give advice on how to handle it, I just mean they need to speak for themselves and act for themselves if I ever want them to be able to grow up and live by themselves.

I had a neighbor as a kid who didn't allow her child to do anything for herself, including getting into fights with other little girls.  Now I don't mean physical fights, I mean the arguments that little girls get into 400 times a day, then refuse to speak to each other, and storm off and go home, then make up 5 minute later and happily play together again kind of fights. I never got into a fight for this girl without her mother taking up arms and fighting like a grown woman in a child's world. This girl didn't have many friends, she couldn't.  She had no idea how to treat others or act because her mother did it all for her, and not in a nice way. From that moment on, I swore I would NOT be the mom who interferes in every childhood argument.

Back to the playground, the boy's passive aggressive way of talking about my girls to his sister loud enough for my girls to hear was BUGGING Serena, like a bee in her bonnet.  She came to talk to me and I lovingly told her, she can chose to ignore it, she can ask him to stop, or she can play in another area.  None of this worked and soon it turned from words to blocking entrance to the playground.

Now that was more than my little girls could handle on their own, so I stepped in...a little bit.  I loudly said, whilst looking directly at the Lord of the Slides, "It's okay girls you can go up there too." And when I said it the boy moved out of the way of the stairs, but his sister blocked the slide. So again I loudly said whilst looking at said children, "Serena just say excuse me, then you can go down too." And the girl rolled her eyes and moved.  Then they tried it again, so I sat there staring at them and again telling my girls as loudly as I could that it was okay to play and to just say excuse me.  I could kind of sort of hear the little boy plotting things, so I continued to stare at them to let them know a. It was NOT okay to mistreat my children, and b. They would not get away with said actions even if their mother was too busy laying on the park bench and talking on her phone to see her kids littering and treating other kids aggressively.

Then the tides changed, because my girls just kept playing nicely and not getting sucked into the fight you could tell the 2 older kids were hoping for. Their younger sister came over to Serena and started talking. Apparently 2 nice kids are more appealing then your mean older sister and brother. And the little girl along with Serena and Chloe walked Sunshine around the grass area.  Then you could see the sadness in the boys eyes that a fight had not ensued, so he and his older sister resigned to having to play nice and came over and also played with Sunshine.  And Serena was NICE to them.  Remember her 2 rules of being her friend? They still apply to kids who are reformed beasts.

I still stand by my not intervening philosophy, but I didn't want to see which of my kids would be voted "piggy" and thrown off the playground equipment, so I passively stepped in. And today it was enough.

But most of all I loved that I got to reassure Serena once again that being the nice girl pays off.  Because no one wants to play with a mean girl (and boy), not even their little sister.  And the nice girl does in the long run have more friends.

I love when a situation in life reaffirms that the hard choice of being kind in a mean girl world is well worth it! Thank you Lord for life lessons, even on playgrounds, among the Lord of the Slides.