The Playground Insults That Never Get Old...

Yesterday when I picked up Eliz from school, I asked her how her day was and she said that it had been a terrible day. I asked her what happened and she said that no one wanted to play with her at recess.

This is a fairly common occurrence with Eliz. Every couple weeks or so, she will say that people don't want to be her friend or that they don't want to play with her. I don't know if that's what truly happens each time she tells me or if she's just being overdramatic (which is definitely a personality trait that Eliz has).

So I've tried to be practical in coaching Eliz about what to say in these situations. I've told her that if someone is trying to hurt her feelings that she should just be nonchalant about it and pretend like it's not bothering her. If someone doesn't want to be her friend, she should just say, "Ok, that's nice. I'll just go play with someone else" and then she should walk away.

So yesterday as we were driving home from school, I started to repeat my advice to Eliz about what to say to kids who are being mean.

But then she told me that some boys were calling her "fat" too and that's why her day was so bad.

This was the first time that anyone has called Eliz such a hurtful name at school.
I immediately began to get angry and defensive for my daughter's sake.

If they were at recess, then I'm sure their teacher wasn't around, so I prepared to call Eliz's teacher to let her know what happened.

I asked Eliz who these rotten boys were, and she told me the names of 2 boys in her class. But then she said that she had already told her teacher and that the boys had to change their behavior cards to red (which would require a note being sent home to their parents to notify them about what caused them to change their card to red.)

So since Eliz's teacher knew about this little incident, I decided not to call her after all. But I said that if it happened again, then I would definitely call her.

Later when Mig asked Eliz how her day was, she began to tell him about her terrible day and about how the 2 boys called her "fat" at recess.

Mig cut Eliz off before she had a chance to finish and asked, "What did I tell you to tell those boys if they called you that again?"

So apparently this had happened before, but I didn't know about it.

Eliz stayed quiet for a moment, but then she said, "But Dad, I can't say that. It's a bad word."

And Mig replied, "It's not a bad word. You just tell them: YOUR MOM IS FAT!"

Even though this was a serious matter, I couldn't contain my laughter. I hadn't heard a 'your mom' insult in quite a while. But then I said, "Miguel, do not tell your daughter to say that. What's wrong with you?"

And he said, "What? She has to defend herself."

Yup. And I guess that would be the way to do it.


(This post was not intended to offend anyone...or their mom.)