Preparations...

The kids were playing in one of those gross play areas in Burger King.

They were playing Tag with some other kids and seemed to be having fun, until S suddenly moved away from the little girl she was playing with and sat by herself in a corner.

I didn't know why, until....

the little girl's brother quickly piped in, "That's her lucky hand!  She can do everything with it.  She can tie her shoes, and even do the monkey bars".

And then all of the kids  came over to take a look.

Except S, who ran down to K and I, to whisper to us, "That girl has a really little hand!  It kinda scares me!"  And we talked about how she shouldn't tell the girl that, because that would hurt her feelings.  (Apparently, she already had, as you'll read later.)  Maybe, she could just respond by saying, "That's okay if your hand is a little different.  Let's go play."  

At the same time, the girl didn't want to play anymore, because she "was hot".

By this time, I was literally teary.  Because I didn't want my kids to be those kids.  The kids that are completely un-accepting of others' differences.  And because I just heard Z say, nonchalantly, "It looks kinda like an alien to me..."

And so...

I called him down, and we talked about how that the word, "alien", is NEVER okay to say to anyone about the way they look.  We talked about how all people are different, and none of us look the same.

While I honestly don't think he meant to hurt the girl's feelings, (I mean, aliens are cool, right!?) he does not often think before he talks (I understand that....that very trait comes from me).

Z sat for a second, thinking, then went back up to ask the girl to play.

S sat a little longer, and had lots of questions about why kids' hands would look like that, so we talked (shortly) about how some kids' development is effected before they are even born, and we reminded her about the "bump" she used to have on her head and how that was different too, but that different is okay.  And not scary.

And we encouraged her to ask the girl, again, to play.

She went back into the play area.

But she wasn't playing with the girl.  She was sitting a little ways away.  Head down.  Gloomy.

And when she finally came down the slide, she burst into tears, sobbing loudly, and saying, "I feel bad because I told her that her hand SCARED me!" to which K replied, "Yeah.  Don't do that."

So she cried harder, and sobbed, "I'm SORRY!  I'm sorry....(sob, sob, snort)."

(And then she cried again in the van.  And again when we finally got home.)

And while I am not proud for not having prepared my kids to respond to that little girl's differences, I am proud of both of them for:

1). Going back and playing when I encouraged him to (Z)

and 2). Feeling SO SO bad for realizing that she hurt someone's feelings (S).

I said, "Ya know, S.  I know you will do things differently next time, and I am proud of you for realizing you hurt her feelings and for feeling so bad about it.  That makes me know how much you really care about people and about how they feel."

And then there were many more questions about why kids would WANT to hurt others' feelings.   "And why would kids tease her at school, because her brother said some kids are mean to her?"

I wondered, right then,  if you ever get over feeling, as a parent of a "different child", like you want to beat the crap out of every kid that looks at your kid the wrong way.

And I know my kids were the ones that were looking at her the wrong way this time, but we plan to prepare them to respond differently (gracefully) next time.

That's all we can do as parent, right?  Learn from the past and prepare for the future?