On Tuesday morning (OK it was afternoon, but still morning for me) we heard someone banging, literally banging, on our door while holding down the doorbell at the same time. Scottie calmly went to answer it, since this crazy attempt to get our attention is an everyday occurrence due to the common occurance of having visitors under the age of 8. Standing there is a 6 year old boy that we know well. He just looks up (way up) at Scottie and yells, “Bad news! Emergency!” When Scottie sought more information from the panicky child, he said, “Billy is trying to beat up Travis!” I still can’t help but laugh at the wide-eyed child stuttering out, “Bad news! Emergency!” The way he said it made me think we were being attacked by terrorists or something. Later accounts of this trauma as reported by the children included the part of the story where, “Jared ran up to Scottie and Breanna’s because of the ‘emergency’.” It was pretty funny.
Scottie went down to see what was going on and when I went down half an hour later, I saw Scottie by the playground with about 10 kids sitting around him in a circle talking. I have to admit, it was pretty cute to see this giant tough guy sitting on their level, trying to help them resolve the most important issue in their young lives. By the time I got there, it had already been decided that it was a misunderstanding because Billy thought Travis wrecked his sand castle (made up not beautiful beach sand, but rather of broken beer bottle and cat poop sand) but really it had been a different Travis that had done it. We spent the next hour listening to various accounts of the story (including a 4 year old girl's version that included the question, "can you play?" in the middle of every other sentence) and I do mean VARIOUS because of course they were all completely different stories. In one story, Billy was chasing Travis with a giant stake in his hand to stab him, in another Travis was beating up Billy's 4 year old sister, and other versions included a slew of middle fingers being thrown this way and that by all kinds of people around. And to think, I've been showing them Veggie Tales Movies about telling the truth!!
For the sake of peace, time, and our sanity, we decided not to go about figuring out the truth, but rather to focus on how we should handle anger and how we should treat people. Using examples of how Scottie and I fight sometimes turned out to be unproductive because that just instigated a bunch of stories about the domestic violence that goes on in their homes, with each story being meant to one up the last. Our attempt at getting them to sit down and participate for a full 5 minutes straight also failed, mostly due to well the fact that they are kids with short attention spans, but also to the "pouter" kid who quits everything that doesn't go his way. Since he was a key player, we had to draw him back in every 2 seconds and convince him that everyone wasn't against him, but that we had listened to his side as well. All in all it was a very frustrating experience for all involved (most of all for myself), but I think it was still the best thing we could have done for the situation.
After all agreed that we should NOT hit people and that we should walk away when we are angry (since fighting only results in Scottie and Breanna making them do "boring" things like sitting around talking for an hour) we finally decided to conclude our anger management training session. Feeling the wrath of all the children upon me for being the mean grown up who disciplined them, I immediately shouted, "who wants Popsicles?!" And then the wrath switched from their eyes to Scottie's because he had just cleaned the playground equipment. :-)
We spent the next couple of hours playing with them to prove that we were still cool enough to hang out with them and that time only built my frustration more and more. They spent the entire time going through one stupid, mean fight after another!! They fought like 10 times more than I've ever seen them fight! One time they were fighting over a tiny piece of a balloon, like a regular balloon that had popped. Seriously screaming and yelling over that. Are you kidding me?! After that they were rolling around in the grass trying to kick each other because the 8 year old wouldn't share(old enough to have that simple skill down), that resulted in a kid getting kicked in the back (hard), and tears. The kid was looking at me straight in the eye crying and I felt absolutely no compassion for him because I was so at my limit! Oh yeah and lets not forget the "pouter" who deemed everything "stupid and boring" as soon as he only 1/2 way didn't get what he wanted and then would go to the corner to pout (leading other kids to do the same).
That night Scottie and I re-capped the situation and it turns out he actually felt encouraged by it all. He said he thought we made a huge difference, where I just felt overwhelmed by the enormity of what we were dealing with. How do you tell a kid who watches his parents kick through walls, break glass on their spouse, get arrested for aggressive behavior, etc., etc. to control their anger?! Scottie eventually convinced me that we had done a huge thing for them that day simply because he said, "no one has ever done that for them and that alone is enough to make it matter significantly to them". And I suppose he's right. After all, this was the biggest "bad news-emergency" they'd had in a long time and it had to have made them feel valued that we treated it with as much importance as they felt it deserved. I only hope so, cause otherwise I don't know how many more times I can pull one kid off of another!
