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Sunday, August 4, 2013

Kids These Days

One of the things we have been excited about in our new neighborhood is the number of kids Sean's age on our street.  We live on a cul de sac and there is a playground at the entrance so there are kids out playing all the time.  This is something we didn't see much of in our old neighborhood.  There were kids but they weren't out as much.  So it has been nice having others around for Sean to spend time with until Friday.  There is one little boy who lives across the street and he has just rubbed me the wrong way from day one.  If we tell him Sean can't come out because it's dinner time or too late then he starts questioning us.  He basically has no respect for our rules (I know...he's only 8 but still) and we know he has rules at home because we've met his parents and heard some of the things he gets in trouble for.  However, things reached a breaking point on Friday.  Eric was at our house and left only to be sent back a few minutes later because he had "traded" some toys with Sean.  Eric's dad said he couldn't do that and Chris agreed that wasn't OK with him either.  I'm not sure how Eric got out of the house without Chris seeing the toys in the first place but I wasn't here when it happened.  So I asked Sean over dinner why he'd given the toys to Eric.  He said Eric told him that he would leave and wouldn't be his friend if Sean didn't give him the toys.  Oh, I was livid.  The kid basically bullied Sean and, because Sean wants to still have a buddy to play with, he went along with it.  It just made me so angry that this kid was taking advantage of him.  Of course when Eric came back, he didn't return all of the toys he took from Sean.  We made the decision then that we just didn't want Sean playing with Eric anymore.  It seems our instincts were right to caution us against him.  So today Eric came over and wanted to play and Sean had to tell him no.  My heart just broke for Sean because I know it was hard and he didn't fully understand our decision but no one is going to treat him like that.  How is it that kids this young can learn to be so mean?  I just don't get it.  I don't remember people being like this when I was young.

1 comment:

HereWeGoAJen said...

That sucks. I hate that kids are mean.