(interiordesignbydunstan.blogspot.com)
We're fortunate to live in an area with quite a few very fun, very well kept parks, but we do have a couple favorites. It was after-school time (3 p.m.), which is a great time to go to the park if you're Xander: lots of kids and they are fairly exuberant, having just spent seven hours in school. (At his age, I preferred to visit the park when no one was there--it was deeply disappointing to arrive and discover even one other child already present. Ugh, I might have to talk to that kid. Or, worse, that kid might have an overzealous parent who would encourage playing. Yuck. I did not want to play. I wanted to climb to a comfortable spot and contemplate my life.) Xander loves to run around with older kids and participate in their games in whatever way he can. Normally they are pretty tolerant and let him tag along. He also hopes to find a girl with long, blonde "princess hair" that he can impress with his ladder-climbing and ring-hanging prowess. He will actually tell me he doesn't want to play at that park if there aren't a suitable number of big kids (not babies) there. Since my inclination is to avoid all public settings at high volume times, I have to make a conscious effort to get him to parks in the afternoon.
So there we are. A decent number of kids are playing, Xander has found some kindergarten boys to play pirates with, and I am in the shade with my Perrier. (My life suddenly sounds so chi-chi. Let me remind everyone that when I got back into the car my hair--pulled back in a ponytail--was sticking up in about eight different directions.
(racheldevine.com)
Thank you, spring wind in Texas. I did not look the picture of relaxing fizzy beverages that Perrier might hope for in a spokesperson. Also, I got the Perrier (a whole liter!) for 79 cents in the Kroger bargain bin.)
And it happens. A kid about Xander's age starts crying and is shepherded to mom by a concerned older brother. "That boy was mean!" the older one announces indignantly. "He pushed him down and kicked his head!" His account is accurate; I saw the incident and while the pushing may have been accidental, the kicking was not.
"Who did it?" the mom wants to know.
"The boy in the blue shirt." Older brother makes a great eyewitness. His account is spot on.
Xander, at that moment, does a face plant in the wood chips. As he gets up, I see the unmistakeable "must not cry in front of bigger boys but I soooo want my mama" expression on his face. I head over to check the damage.
When I return to my spot on the bench, the group of moms is whispering. One of them mutters something about "her son" and realize that Xander is being blamed for the pushing/kicking incident. I look back at Xander, spitting wood bits into the grass.
He's wearing a blue shirt.
Instantly, I know what is going on. I have identified myself as the mother of that horrible child who has injured the little boy. Except that we'd only been there for a few minutes, and I'd been watching Xander every moment.
No one comes over to directly accuse Xander of this crime. They rarely do. Most moms instead prefer the whisper campaign, trading assumptions and generalization with one another. I usually just (inwardly) roll my eyes and continue. I went to high school. I've seen Mean Girls. Y'all can waste your time disparaging my parenting while my son and I have a good time at the park. I'm sure that brine of bitterness does wonders for one's skin.
If the mom had approached me, I could have set straight. I saw what happened. Xander was not involved. It wouldn't matter though, so I don't mind the mom's cowardice. No matter what I say, Xander is guilty because he is big. Never mind that the other boy in a blue shirt--Xander's age or a bit older, but much smaller--has been consistently terrorizing the other children: throwing wood chips, hitting, kicking, and not taking turns. I know what she'll say without hearing it because I've head it so many times before. When another child is put forth as the offender, the indignant mom blurts, "But he's so tiny."
Big Baby Truism #10: Big kids are automatically pegged as the aggressor, even when there is evidence to the contrary.
My dad, a former big kid himself and current six-foot-five "giant," warned me about this phenomenon, but I've still been amazed to see it play out so predictably at parks and kiddie classes. If the culprit for hitting/shoving/kicking is not immediately known, Xander is always the first suspect. Even when another kid is the bully, he will accuse Xander and the grownups fall for it with startling regularity. If, heaven forfend, Xander bumps into a child on accident, the mom gives the side eye as if my three-year-old is an expert at making purposeful violence look haphazard.
It's not fair. The most unfair part is that I can't change it; the idea that big equals bully is obviously deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche. For all the benefits of size and strength, we seem to unduly punish big kids for all kinds of imagined acts of aggression or premeditated cruelty.
"Well, tiny kids can be mean too," I point out when I get the opportunity. Meanness is in no way associated with size.
Honestly, it's counter-intuitive to me that big kids would be physically aggressive. They don't need it. Demonstrations of physical prowess are the domain of the small, the ones who have something to prove. Any kid can look at Xander and see that he can hold his own physically. (Well, unless we're having a balancing contest.) As such, Xander rarely throws the first punch. Why does he need to hit a kid? His size alone often intimidates other kids into surrendering toys and territory, even when intimidation isn't intentional. (On this same trip to the park, Xander very nicely asked a little girl for a turn on her swing. She agreed readily, then ran straight to her mom and accused Xander of taking her swing. It's possible she was playing her mom--she was the kind of mom who followed her kids around the playground correcting everything they did ("Don't pick that up! Don't touch that! You're too small to climb that!" etc.)--but it's equally possible that while Xander's words were kind, his size was perceived as threatening.) We all have a survival instinct, I guess; even little kids understand size equals power, at least physically, and that superiority should be treated carefully.
Since I can't change how kids or parents react to Xander's size, the best I can do is teach him to be his own advocate. More so than for most kids, he will have become adept at speaking up for himself. Right now, that's my job. "He's big for his age. He just turned three and half," I tell moms all the time (clarifying age is often the first step in realigning people's expectations of Xander, I've learned), "and he's still learning how to behave, but he didn't [insert crime here] just now."
Beyond showing big kids how to stand up for themselves in the face of false accusations, the next best thing a Big Baby Parent can do is be honest with themselves about their children. We've all met the parent who believes her child can do no wrong and so has a small terror running wild and victimizing the other kids because mom just somehow never sees any of his negative behaviors. At this very same park (I'm starting to think we shouldn't go there anymore) on a different occasion, a boy repeatedly kicked Xander. Since Xander obviously wasn't being hurt, I waited to see if the kids could sort it out. After the fifth kick, I intervened. . .carefully. I didn't correct the kicking boy, since that raises the hackles of other parents. I suggested to Xander that since the other boy was hurting him, maybe he should find something else to do for a while. The boy's mom noticed what was happening--her son was still trying to kick Xander as I led him away--so she made him say to Xander, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to kick you" which was the strangest non-apology I'd ever heard. He "accidentally" kicked Xander in the legs and back over and over again, all while holding on to the park equipment for support? Interesting.
Big Baby Parents cannot afford to be that parent; other parents won't let you, anyway. They'll call attention to your kid's supposed misbehavior before you can even blink. So be pragmatic. I don't for one second think Alexander wouldn't be rough on purpose with other kids. I've seen him hit and push. He's no delicate flower and he's certainly gotten into fisticuffs before. I know he is capable of these things. Because of that and because of the attitude we so often encounter, I'm very vigilant. When he's accused of wrongdoing, I need to know if he really did something or not. He should be punished appropriately for being too rough, but when he's been good and kept his hands to himself, I need to defend him.
I want him to see that when you follow the rules, you need to speak up and let people who doubt know that you followed the rules. Because I think one possible source of the big kids are bullies mentality is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some big kids get wrongfully accused of--and punished for--rough behavior so often that they think, "Well, if I'm going to get in trouble anyway, I may as well push some kids around." That's one of my biggest fear for Xander, especially as he enters full-time school, since I know that even teachers are not immune to assuming the big kid is the guilty party in all situations. (I've literally sat at the park with a sobbing Xander clutching the goose egg on his head while the mom of his attacker maintained, with red-faced vehemence, that her son--dry-eyed and grinning slyly behind her--was the one who had been hit. By Xander, of course.) Big Baby Parents need to acknowledge when their kids are in the wrong, but push against the stereotype when their kids are in the right. After all, you can only take the blame if you in fact accept it. When a big kid has done nothing wrong, he shouldn't be forced to accept responsibility because of others' preconceived notions about size.
The tougher and more complex lesson here is that often big kids' intentions don't matter. Xander followed all the necessary conventions of politeness and turn-taking when he asked for the swing, and yet there was still fall-out. Learning how to interact with your peers is hard enough without having to factor in that your size often speaks louder--and in opposition to--your true intentions. Sadly, as a woman I feel like I can relate and am prepared to help him navigate this disconnect. I've experienced first hand many times how men react to me in a way that's completely out of sync with the image I'm presenting. I was, memorably, accused of seducing boys in the weight room in college (not in quite so many words, but that was the implication--not because of anything I done but because of my mere presence.) I seldom even talked to anyone in the weight room except to occasionally ask if I could work in a set, but while I was asking that question, my breasts (squished nearly flat in a sports bra) were evidently saying, "Come hither." Never mind that my favored workout wear at the time was anything free: xl t-shirts and hand-me-down basketball shorts. (I did have a few tees with snarky sayings, but I was 18 and it was 2001. And I don't recall ever wearing my "panty bandit" shirt to the gym, so I did show some judgment.) I had to learn what most women do: that no matter your intentions or your attitude or your outfit, you are often (usually, even) perceived as a sex object. Xander will have to, in a similar way, reconcile that his attitude will often be ignored and people will respond to his size only.
But that's a lesson for another day. Yesterday, Xander played nicely with everyone at the park and I was proud of him, despite what other people thought. Ultimately, that's the best lesson: you can't control what other people think, but that's okay: what matters is that you know you've behaved your best and been true to yourself.
