Words of a Child

Deep Thinker really loves playing volleyball and kickball after lunchtime. The kids get to choose what they want to do. He always chooses to play ball. I would guess that he’d prefer to play alone, but that’s not what he wants to do.

SO, there are frequent scores, outs, and every once in a while he comes home and tells me about a run-in he’s had. (Or, more precisely, something mean someone did.)

Two days ago, he said that one boy, Ryan, was slapping and kicking the ball out of his hands each time he managed to get the ball! Boy that made me MAD.

(As I have mentioned, Deep Thinker has always had a tendency to be passive. He has worked hard on learning to speak up, tell the teacher, or tell people to stop doing mean stuff when it happens.)

Well, I told him that he needs to do something to address that problem with the ball, or Ryan would end up doing it more often. Deep Thinker sure doesn’t want that–it’s hard enough to get the ball in the first place. He’s not giving it up that easily. So, we talked about telling the playground supervisor, maybe doing the same thing back to Ryan if it happens again, or just telling Ryan that he can’t do that anymore. Deep Thinker decided on that last option.

Today after school, I asked him if he had a chance to talk to Ryan. Here is my son’s story about the conversation: “Yes, I talked to Ryan. But he was already playing a game. So I went over to him and said ‘Hey Ryan, I didn’t like the way you were slapping the ball out of my hands yesterday. You can’t do that anymore.'”

Sounds good so far. He continues, “But Ryan ignored me. So I said it again. But he kept ignoring me. So I followed him and said it many more times.” And I asked, “Well, then what happened?”

He said, “Oh, the last time I said it, Ryan finally turned around and looked at me and said, ‘OK, OK, I heard you say that a million times already!'”

So, I guess Ryan’s little strategy was to pretend he couldn’t hear Deep Thinker. Apparently, it didn’t work very well:)

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