Rough Time

So we went to the park yesterday with the four year old preschool class. Brian was playing happily, when suddenly I heard him screeching for me at the top of his lungs. My kids were surrounding him and leading him to me. One of them kept saying, "Miss Maria, a boy hurt Brian. He was being really mean, I saw him hurt Brian." When I finally got Brian to calm down a little bit and had ruled out serious injuries, I asked my student, which boy had hurt Brian. He pointed out a little boy, maybe 3 years old, who was clearly the perpetrator, as he took off running as soon as he saw me looking his way.

I followed him, thinking I would talk to him and see if we could work out the problem and when I caught up to him I noticed a large chunk of my baby's hair in his hand. I was LIVID. I am super sensitive about Brian's head. We paid a lot of money to get it to turn correctly and be rounder. We have sat through countless appointments about his ears. We even had to sit through a surgery for tubes. I cannot stand the idea of anyone (literally) hurting a hair on his head.

Brian doesn't even "get" mean yet. The kids at the preschool are super sweet to him and he has not experienced bullying or anyone intentionally hurting him. In fact, the preschool kids were as angry as me. I was afraid they were going to chase the little boy down and pound him into the ground.

As it was, I was so mad that I didn't do much of anything. The mother of the child clearly saw what was going on and did nothing. I tried to say something to her and she out right ignored me. I don't want to be the mom that runs to the other parent to tattle. I don't want to have to parent other people's kids when they choose not to. But I also don't want Brian to think it's okay for someone to hurt him and get away with it.

After I was still fuming and I called Shawn's aunt to see what her take was. She said I handled it fine and just comforting Brian was the best thing to do. She said next time she would consider talking to the offending child. One of my teachers said to talk to the mom. What would you do in this situation? What's the right way to handle this kind of thing?

It's hard! And believe me, I know that Brian won't always be the victim. There will come a time where he does something similar to another child. But I will PARENT him when that happens. Why can't everyone else just do that too?