Last night Brian learned a tough life lesson. We were at the pool and he was being a bit rough in the baby pool...splashing other kids...so Shawn took him out and into the big pool. While they were in the big pool I had Lilah in the baby pool and one of the little boys kept squirting Lilah with his water gun. He was also squirting my friend Melissa who was fully clothed sitting on the side of the pool so we could chat. I asked the little boy to, "please not squirt the baby," repetitively until his parents finally noticed the situation, yelled at him and took the water gun away for maybe 2 minutes before returning it to him. At this point the scene repeated itself. I was annoyed, but I was trying to make lite of it with the Dad. In retrospect I should not have made lite of it at all.
Lilah decided she needed to nurse, so we got out of the pool. At some point adult swim was called and Brian returned to the baby pool. He was splashing around with Addison and some of the other kids. They were being silly, but having fun...nothing to rough.
Then literally out of nowhere, the kid who was squirting Lilah 10 minutes prior, walked over to Brian and clocked him in the head with his water gun. In the seconds that followed I could see that Brian was about to LOOSE it on this kid. Brian was bigger than the kid and he is really, really strong. I told Shawn to get in there and remove him from the situation, quick! Shawn did and Brian was absolutely ticked. I am not sure if he even know whether he was mad at the boy, or at Shawn for keeping him from taking the kid out. Maybe both?
It took Brian a good long time to calm down. He was crying so hard and he is just not a crier. I held him and kept telling him it was okay and he kept shouting, "No! It's not okay!" Poor guy. I really think this is the first time he recalls being treated so unfairly. He's used to nice kids who don't act like that. We haven't intentionally protected him from (pardon the Mama Bear in me) little jerks like this kid, but our friends have similar values to ours and that's who he has been around-our friends kids. He goes to school, of course, but the teachers seem to be really good about squashing this type of mean spirited behavior. He was completely crushed that someone would treat him that way. In Brian's world, if someone does something like that, they get punished and they have to apologize.
Now Brian is definitely no angel, and often he deserves what he gets. He seems to accept that. If he is being silly or punky and someone acts that way back to him, he takes it in stride most of the time. He could be gentler with his baby sister, but he knows when he's not it means he is in trouble. Just last week he put himself in time out after pushing her over!
Brian and a sensitive guy and his sensory issues didn't help him in this situation either. He was also overly tired and had not had a great day leading up to this event.
After we left the pool, we went to my parents house. My Dad (not knowing this had happened) asked Brian what he had done before coming over. Brian said (through tears), "Went to the pool. The boys were mad at me." "No, Brian," I corrected, "the boys were mean to you." He was clearly still upset about it.
And then again this morning, I tried to talk to him about it and he got visibly upset. He told me he wasn't going back to the pool. I think have convinced him that he should go back, but that we won't play with those mean boys again. I tried to break it down to his level. Sometimes people are mean. We just don't play with people who are mean to us.
It's hard though. Should I have let him knock the kid out? The parents basically did nothing. They yelled at the kid from the side of the pool. I know it seemed unjust to Brian. Hell, it was unjust! If he had acted that way, he would have been in time out and then forced to apologize to the kids. It's not fair that some parents don't parent and my kid got hurt (both physically and emotionally) because of that.
But it happens. I know that it happens. It's life. Sometimes life just isn't fair. That's a hard one to explain to an almost four year old.
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