I took Natalie to Central Park in San Mateo after her Little Gym class this morning. Natalie was happily running on the big structure and went down the curly slide. Everytime after she went down the slide, she would say, "再黎過". I was following behind her. This time, there was a little girl sitting near the top of the slide. She was neither going up or sliding down. She looked like she was about a little more than 3 years old. I told Natalie to wait. We waited patiently at the top of the slide. About 30 seconds later, the little girl started pointing at Natalie and shouted at her:
"You stinky little baby! Get out of here! I am a big girl now. I hate stinky little baby!"
She repeated it a couple times. Natalie started getting upset, because she totally understood the girl. Natalie was telling me, "姐姐唔鍾意我呀。"
I felt for Natalie, because she was 好無辜. She didn't do anything, nor say anything to the little girl. She didn't understand why the little girl was shouting at her. I couldn't hold it and the mommy bear of me came out. I asked the girl,
"Where's your daddy or mommy?"
She pointed to a mid-aged man on the bench.
I took Natalie with me and walked to that guy. I asked him, "Was that your little girl over there?"
He said, "Yes."
I told him what happened. He just smiled and said he would talk to her. He didn't apologize (well, I didn't expect him to) and he didn't even seem to care a bit about it.
I was thinking, "This is the kind of parent that taught a kid to behave that way."
I certainly wanted to erase Natalie's memory of what she heard from the little girl. Not only because it hurt her feeelings, but I also didn't want her to have any memory of it and then used it on some other little kids later on.
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3 comments:
Sorry to hear that...Yea... it's tough out there...poor Natalie and poor Teresa. I admire how brave you are...
If I were you, I would talk to the little girl directly, tell her it is not nice to say that to another person; and how would she feel if you say that to her. You can even tell her that no one will play with her if she s mean like that.
That way may be it would help Natalie to learn a good way to approach mean kids. She can learn to assert herself and not to feel bad about it.
@weezie: thanks for your suggestion. I actually had thought about saying something to the little girl. But I didn't want her ended up crying and her parents would think that I bullied her. If I come across this situation again (hopefully not :p), I will probably try to find a balance: talk to the kid briefly and then talk to the parent ;-)
I'm sorry to hear that too, but I think it's a good thing that you were around when that happened.
Natalie might feel hurt, but she would learn from you to tell right from wrong, and stand up for herself one day when she has to deal with it on her own.
:)
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