Feb
6
I should say at the beginning that I’ve had a hard time with whether or not to write about this at all. It involves School Girl, her best friend, and a mutual “friend” of both of them. It also has to do with how we deal/don’t deal so well with problem subjects here at Chez Evil. Just so you know.
Last week, School Girl seemed a little quiet on the way home, even for her. She’s normally a fairly quiet girl on a good day, but she’ll readily talk about how her day went on our walk home. Including what she and her best friend did on the playground. That’s been conspicuously missing over the past week or two. So I asked what was going on.
It turned out that two of the kids she hangs out with on the playground, including her best friend, have been playing a game. She called it The Fairy Game, and she said she didn’t like it. I asked if she had talked to her friends about playing a different game. They didn’t listen to her. I was mystified about what would be so bad about playing fairies. Were they trying to fly (not out of the realm of possibility for a 6-7 year old)? No. Were they dancing around in a circle? No.
About a half-hour after our conversation, it suddenly occurred to me what they meant by fairies. In this instance, it’s closely related to a derogatory term for a gay man. She wouldn’t have known what they were talking about – we don’t use that sort of hate speech in our house. All she knew is that she didn’t feel comfortable playing that game, she wanted to play something else, and they didn’t. So she was feeling abandoned by people she thought were friends.
“So you’ve been playing by yourself all this time?”
“No. I’ve been playing with (insert names of two other classmates here).”
“Are they playing okay with you?”
“Yep. We’ve been having fun.”
In fact, they’ve apparently been having so much fun that those names have suddenly appeared on her birthday party list.
Later on, we talked about how words can hurt others, even though some people might think it’s funny. How it’s never okay to hurt or deliberately make fun of other people. (Unless, of course, they’re mean-spirited neoconservative wads, which I chose not to bring up…) That it’s okay to trust your instincts about things that are going on around you, even if you don’t understand at the time; if it seems wrong, chances are that it is wrong. Finally, it’s more than okay to do your own thing, even if it’s hard at first. Then we read some stories – we’ve been taking turns reading at bedtime now, she reads to us at least part of the time every night – and she went to bed.
I honestly never thought I’d have to deal with this in first grade. Never. I’m not quite sure how to deal with it when it comes up again, or something like it comes up. But we’ll see.
Blarg. That sucks. You have to wonder WTF made the other girls come up with this ‘game.’
Sounds to me like you handled this whole situation quite well. It also sounds like SG has a well-developing sense of social justice as well, which speaks louder of the fact that you’re both doing a great job as parents than just the handling of this specific situation. *hugs*
Due to the nature of our household (same-sex parents) and extended family (B’s sis has a biracial son from her marriage of several years ago… she’s now widowed), we have conversations with Boo about hurtful words and hateful attitudes pretty regularly, and he has developed strong sense of pride at the diversity in his family because of it.
One thing for sure… 21st century parenting is not for the feint of heart. *tight hugs again*
Hi Evil Mommy,
I’m speechless. Have we come so far as a society only to back step again?
Kids that age are all about clubs, and who is in and who is out. I feel so bad for School Girl. I am glad that she did find a new group to have fun with. I’m putting on my wings and sending her a Fairy Godmother kiss. The only kind she should know about at this age.
I’m sending you some friendship love. It only gets harder raising kid from here on. Good thing it’s worth it.
Sincerely, Euphoria
When my oldest was 7, he came home and told me another kid told him he was going to burn in hell. Why? Because Dylan didn’t believe in Jesus and the other kid did. In fact, he said, “You don’t believe? Jesus is going to come down and kill you and send you to hell and you’re gonna burn.”
Dylan was in freakin’ 1st grade!
And people sincerely wonder why we’re atheists.
Thanks so much, you guys. I’ve been wrestling with whether or not to answer in public or by email. As you can see, reason and logic weren’t the winners today.
Protected Static, Deb: I’ve got a pretty good idea about who exactly came up with this “game”. It’s not the person I thought of at first, unfortunately. Sorry it has to be so vague…
Lady Euphoria: I’ve been hearing that “this is the easy part” from both my sister/ex-BiL and Evil Dad’s bro/wife. Their kids are either exactly the same age or as much as 3 years older than School Girl. Apparently, 9-year-olds are far, far older than I ever remember being. Hell, even now…
Bron: *sigh* That’s on its way – I can feel it. Most of School Girl’s friends are either fundamentalists or, um, crazier. Not in a good way either.
I don’t try to convert people. Honestly. I just wish others would afford us the same consideration.