Today I am grateful for the chance I recently had, to make a
difference in someone else’s life.
When I was struggling
with infertility, I often thought that If I ever had children I would be so protective of
them and would do everything to prevent any harm from ever coming to them.
Nothing strange here though, because that is what a parent is supposed to do.
With this said, I had the chance of working in a Summer camp
for two months recently and being a worker at the camp, one of the perks was
that my children could attend. Very early into the camp, a little boy saw my
son, I guess, an easy target to pick on. He started calling him names and so my
son came to me and complained about it. I first said to him don’t worry, we
will just see if this continues, (even though the overprotective side of me was screaming, "lets deal with this now, no one interferes with my miracle child and gets away with it). I managed to hold it together though. He came to me a couple times after that complaining that this child was still picking on him and so I decided it was time to act. I at first took a subtle approach, I told him well, I would handle it by trying
to find a name to pin on him (from what I have noticed about bullies if they
see you as an easy target, that is, you do not retaliate, that boosts their ego
and they like that. If you stand up to them, worst, if you retaliate in front
of their friends, it embarrasses them and they soon move on to the next easy
target). The little boy wears glasses, so I said to my son, he wears glasses
right? Well, call him a blind bat (I am
not really proud that I actually resorted to doing that, because as a parent, I
should be teaching my child that two wrongs do not make a right - please forgive my humanness here and I am admitting that my son and I even came
up with some more names). Well, he called him the names but apparently it
yielded no results. I then decided to go to the camper in person and speak to
him. I did that and it did not help that by this time I was a bit on the upset
side. I wanted to say to him, “how dear you
chose my son to be a target for your cowardly bullying. Stop this now or answer
to me from now on.”
I managed to just to say the first line of my prepared speech
to him and then as soon as I looked into his little face I saw far behind the
bullying, I saw a child needing attention, a child probably neglected at home,
or just not validated as a worthy precious being. I immediately changed my
speech and instead asked him if he would like be picked on or called names. He
promptly said no. I finished by saying, well do not do to others what you would
not want done to you.
You know what, he still picked on my son and other kids too,
but soon though, it was he who came to
me on a few occasions to complain that my son was calling him names.
Later in camp, I found that the way I felt about this little
boy had changed. I felt like I was his friend, so much so that on occasions I
would just go and talk to him to validate him and commend him when he did
anything worth commendation.
I left camp feeling grateful for having had the chance to make
a difference in this little life of promise.
Let me know your thoughts, would you have dealt with this situation the same way I did?
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