I've been trying to teach Daughter to stand up for herself. I've been telling her that she doesn't have to let people be mean to her. She has a history of allowing other kids to be mean; biting, kicking, pushing her, and she keeps on playing with them like nothing happened. This has been her attitude since she started playing with other kids.
I kind of felt bad but at the same time did a little happy dance on the inside the first time she stood up for herself. We were at a mommy group and Daughter was playing on one of those scoot along toys and a boy came up grabbed the handles, dumped Daughter to the ground and started riding off on it. Daughter sat on the ground with a pouty lip for a moment then got up, walked over to the boy on the scoot toy, looked at me over her shoulder, hauled off and pushed the boy right off the side, jumped back on and rode away with a smile on her face. Outside I went over to her and told her that neither one of them could play with the toy now if they couldn't be nice to each other but inside...I WAS PROUD! She finally didn't just get a confused look and go off to find a new toy!
Now I guess I wasn't really proud...that may be the wrong term but I was happy that she wasn't just sitting there and taking the other kid pushing her around. I started trying to explain that pushing, hitting, kicking, throwing things were not acceptable ways of standing up for herself. I told her that from then on she needed to stand up for herself with words. I said, "Just say, 'you're being mean and if you can't be nice I don't want to play with you,' and walk away." Now, that is so one of those 'do as I say not as I do' moments cuz I probably would've pushed the kid off the scoot toy too but I'm supposed to be teaching her to behave better than me!
More recently there was a incident with another girl biting Daughter. Daughter screamed and looked for me to do something about it but I can't reprimand the other lady's kid so I told Daughter to do the whole you're mean walk away thing. She didn't listen. In fact, she went right back to playing with the little girl as if nothing happened. I was upset cuz I saw this as a total backslide.
This past friday though Daughter apparently decided she was done playing the doormat. She was playing with a couple of other kids when the little boy apparently kicked her. Daughter screamed an Amazon war cry and hauled off and throw a hard plastic fireman toy right at the boy. After this she says, "Stop being mean or I'm done playing!" I'm sorry but yep, now I was proud and I might have had to hide a giggle or two!
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