Hurt Feelings on the Playground

Sometimes I forget how hard it is to be a kid. Sitting and watching my daughter play at the playground is a quick reminder.

My three-year-old daughter is very outgoing and extroverted, especially for her age. Immediatly upon arriving at the playground, she scans the structures looking for her next best friend… at least for the day. Once she seeks him/her out, she goes up and says something, (I’m sitting on a bench a good distance away so I don’t know what she says) and then grabs the child’s hand or gives them a hug.

Some kids don’t like this and try to get away, but my daughter won’t take no for an answer (she’s a chip off this old journalist’s block). If this happens she then follows the kid and tries to play along with them. For some reason, she is drawn to kids who are one or two years older than her. Most of the time, those kids don’t want to play with a “little kid”, but my daughter doesn’t understand that.

The other day at the park, my daughter followed her prospective friend into a playhouse where the girl was playing with another girl her age. I think the girls were maybe four or five-years-old. My daughter wanted to play with them so bad. Both of the older girls sat down on the playhouse bench, not leaving any room for my girl. My daughter didn’t like this at all. She kept asking to sit down, the girls refused and continued to ignore her. As I watched, it almost appeared the girls were ganging up on my daughter — telling her they didn’t want to play with a “baby.”

Oh, the sting of rejection! It seems to hurt even more than it would’ve had it been a rejection of my own. Unfortunately, that’s just a part of life and something my little one will have to endure and learn from.

I’ve told her before that when she wants to play with someone who doesn’t want to play with her, she should just walk away and find someone else to play. She seemed to remember our little rhyme in this case and stood back from the girls while still remaining in the playhouse, doing her own thing.

Then I hear both girls screaming at her to leave. “We don’t want you here. You are a baby. Get out!” I hung back and looked around. Where the hell are the parents for these two? I shouldn’t have to step in and intervene when it’s another parent’s job to actually parent.

I would like for my girl to defuse the situation on her own, but these girls seem overly aggressive. I look around. None of the moms are even watching their kids. Some are reading/texting; a few are deep in discussion with other moms. I start to get agitated. Mommy’s gonna have to step in. I wait and listen.

“We don’t want to play with you!” said the one girl and then she pushed my daughter right out the door of the playhouse, knocking her to the ground. I stood up and walked over to the house.

“Hey, you don’t push! That’s not what nice girls do!” The guilty girl just looks at me.

I ask my daughter if she is ok and I help her up. She is stunned and maybe a little embarrassed. She hides her face against my leg.

Just then a lady walked up to us. I remember she was one of the one’s reading or texting. She didn’t correct her kid; she looked incredulously at me and my kid. At that moment I was filled with rage, a million thoughts of what to say filled my head.

“How about doing a little more parenting and a little less texting! We are only raising the next generation of grown-ups, do your job,” is what I thought.

“Some kids are just a-holes, just like grown-ups,” was another thing that popped in my head to tell my kid. Inappropriate, so scratch that one.

Then it hit me, I kneeled down to my daughter’s level.

“Sweetie, some people, including kids, are just rude. That’s because their mommies and daddies don’t teach them the right way to act, but I love you and I want you to know the way that girl treated you was wrong.”

I said this loud enough for the girl and her mom to hear and I shot the mom a look.

Luckily after that, my daughter wanted to go home for lunch. I really did not want to get into a fist fight at the playground.

Have you experienced a similar situation where someone refused to correct their child’s poor behavior toward your child? How did you handle it?

Media Mama78 spent more than a decade as a TV network affiliate news reporter and anchor in cities across the country. Now, this two-time mommy is taking a brief hiatus from the 24-7 news cycle to actually live her life. How she is handling the pause, daily musings on mommyhood during and after TV, a typical bitch-fest on what has happened to broadcast news (and media in general) can be found on her blog Confessions of a Media Mama.