Kyle was in one of his moody moods yesterday, and it was all because his classmate S pinched him twice in school that afternoon. Hb was feeling very protective and told Kyle to defend himself and push S if he tries to pinch him again, and then kick the latter if he attempts again. My respond differed a little from hb's as I told Kyle to say. "No! Don't pinch me!" and not to push or hit the boy, even if the latter attempts to hurt him again and to make sure that he tells the teacher that S was hurting him. I already knew what was the cause behind S's antagonistic behaviour towards Kyle.
Kyle became rather upset over the pinching incident and was all whiny and clingy the whole afternoon. He realised that he was the cause behind S's pinching as he antagonised the latter about a week back. I recalled Kyle mentioned that he sat in the naughty chair in school twice last week for pinching S. And the reason for his misbehaviour? He pinched S as he was frustrated over the lack of response when he asked S to share a toy, but S totally ignored him. So he pinched the latter to see if he could get a response from him. So S responded by 'taking revenge' this week.
He asked me this last week, "Why is it that S does not answer back when I ask him nicely. I said please..and I asked a few times, he said nothing. If he say no, I will play something else." My reply was, "Not all kids know how to respond when someone speaks to them. That's why it is important to always answer when someone asks you a question, and not just ignore them. It is very rude to ignore and not respond. But at the same time, you cannot pinch him just because he did not answer you and you are frustrated with him. If he does not answer you, just walk away and choose something else to play with."
Kyle response to hb and my advise was, "I don't want to fight back." I asked him if he told his teacher about it. His reply was "Yes, but the teacher did not scold him." I assume that the lack of attention to this little wrangle at school could be likely due to the teacher's assumption that Kyle started this and thus deserve this response from S. Better to let them to fight it out amongst themselves, or it could just be that there are just too many kids in the class to address every single issue.
I try not to over-react and highlight this to the teacher at this point. Even though Kyle is only 4, I think it will the best to teach him how to try to manage this with his classmate. I can't be there 24/7 for him, and he needs to start to think how best to manage situations like these with what he has learnt from us. In the meantime, I will monitor the outcome and see how it turns out the next couple of weeks at school.
How will you manage this if this happened to your child in preschool?
Both my kids have experienced similar situations in school and very often when they come back complaining we will just address them as you have ie. tell the child (perpetrator) to back off because it hurts if that doesn’t work, report to the teacher. If the teacher didn’t step in to intervene, I asked them to not play with the child for a while if the child still insist on hurting them.
I agree with you that the kids have to learn to sort out their differences and their issues with their friends on their own though we must inculcate the proper behaviour and attitude towards such matters ie. not to return a tit for a tat rather to reason things out verbally and be more assertive but not aggressive.
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Seems like this is a very common problem most kids face in school, either become the perpetrator or the victim.
Hi Rachel, thanks for dropping by my blog earlier. I realized I have chanced upon your blog previously and read it a couple of times even before I started blogging.
Think I’ll be more active in the blogosphere now that I’ve started blogging. Thanks for your encouragement to keep writing
.-= Joce´s last blog ..A lovely weekend =-.
Hi Joce, thanks for dropping by my blog. Glad to be able to connect with another blogging mom
Very similar to a situation faced by Kai in February this year. http://happyxokoto.blogspot.com/2011/02/upset.html
He started to hit his classmates when they ‘refused to play with him’ and the very next day, we were bawled at by the classmate’s parent. From then on, he never hits, but started crying the moment he had to step into school… for the whole year until now.
The incident seemed to have left a ‘scar’ in him. His teachers were all very helpful in this case. I think Kyle’s teachers should intervene at the point when the problem started. I agree with leaving the kids to solve their own problem but only to certain extent (as they are still very young), the teachers should still intervene and guide them in the process of solving the problems, especially at the point of its first occurence.
Sigh…I had some problems also as Kyle refused to go to school after the incident, quoting ‘School is boring’ as an excuse not to attend. Had to make an effort to speak to him gently and encourage him along. These few days seem to be ok. according to him, the pinching have stopped. Agree with you that the teacher should address the problem immediately, and u remind me that I should at least highlight to the teacher so that she will take note. Too many kids in the class for her to be on top of every little squabble amongst the kids.