One of them pushed him over and he immediately, humouringly, picked himself up and started chasing them again. I informed my sister-in-law, hoping she would intervene and these those older louts to behave and include one and all. But she just smiled and said, "Oh good he's getting bullied. he's got to start somewhere."
At first a bit hurt, I quickly understood the deeper reason behind her gladness that her three-year-old was being laughed at when they pushed him to the ground.
But when The Boy recently got pushed around in the park, it has taken me two weeks to come to terms with it.
We'd gone for a barbecue in the park, and there were four other kids there. Two of them were older, three-year-olds, while the other two were newborns who happily slept in their respective prams all day and only woke up to be fed before they went back to sleep again.
So the two older kids had been going at each other's throat from much before we arrived, and by now they were adequately charged up, jumping on each other, racing the other down the slope of the park, rolling about in the lawns, and all the while screaming and laughing at the top of their voices.
The Boy, on the other hand, first took quite a while to get familiar with the grass and start crawling. Then when he finally did start crawling about, it was more to explore new territory and find things that he could use to pull himself up.
So when he finally found one of the prams where a newborn was sleeping a sturdy enough base to stand up with, and helped himself to it, the two older kids came charging at him, screaming "NO" into his face, at the top of their voices.
They were shooed off by their mums.
Later, when the two mums were busy with the newborns, and I was looking after The Boy, the two older ones came and again screamed into his face. It was like they'd suddenly notice that there was this person who was littler than them and didn't really walk or talk, and was therefore excellent target for screaming practice.
They were sitting close to him and I was standing behind waching carefully, telling them to be soft with him. They were touching his cheeks and he was looking at them questioningly, "are they playing with me?"
And suddenly came the slap. A loud laugh followed.
I took in a big breath in, and told them to be even softer. I didn't know how exactly to react to a 3-year-old who had just slapped my boy across the face.
The Boy, meanwhile, was a little stunned, a lot unsure, "I'm not sure if they're still playing with me?"
More screaming in the face followed, and finally one of the mums came to shoo the older kids away.
I saw The Boy slapping his face twice then because he'd thought this was what you did when you got older.
I still felt I shouldn't hug him and tell him it was alright, because frankly, I was unsure how a mum was supposed to react in a situation where her kid had just got bullied by other kids who didn't really know what they were doing, and that her boy was too small to know what was happening in any case. Hugging him would have made it a big deal.
I had noticed a bit of a run-up to this day, when at playareas older kids (2.5-3 year olds) would come with their toy cars trying to run over him; or some of them would just make loud sortof "booing" noises at him even if he was only crossing by. One of them had left the toy car and was walking off to greener pastures but just as he saw The Boy crawling towards it, he ran back and reclaimed it. This happened several times during the day.
Later that afternoon, the louts struck again and when The Boy was happily crawling one of them picked his leg up from behind and made him fall on his face.
He wasn't happy this time and started his big noiseless-first-but-turning-to-earscreeching crying. I hugged him this time. I was happy to.
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