FIGHT!

Uh oh... Caleb got beat up by a 6th grade girl on the way home from school yesterday.  I'm glad he stopped himself from going FULL BLAST on her.  He was shocked & embarrassed which in a way is good because I think it stopped his crazy temper getting out of control.  I'm certainly not against him defending himself, even if it's against girl, but he's still figuring out how to control himself once he gets started.  Poor Camden has been full blast attacked by Caleb and it's not pretty to watch!  Apparently Caleb, another 3rd grade boy & a kindergartner boy were throwing snowballs at a bunch of girls.  One of the girls turned around, grabbed Caleb by the ear, stuck her finger in his eye & then swung him by the ear down a hill & into a ditch!  I've never seen him so upset.  He got home & could hardly tell the story because he was crying so hard.  My friends cute little girl saw it all happened and showed up at our door with some chocolate pudding for Caleb because she felt so bad for him.  She'd even gone home crying about it because she said it was so scary!  A little later I had a group of girls at the door that had either seen it happen or heard about it and they all wanted to know if Caleb was o.k.  Then I got a message from a mom that heard about it & wanted to know if Caleb was o.k.  Her message said she knows how sweet Caleb is & that her daughter was also upset by what she'd seen.  Then I got a call from the mom of the girl that did the ear pull/ finger jab/ throw down move & she wanted to say sorry and that the girl was going to bring Caleb some cookies to apologize.  Sheesh, this thing was getting a bit out of control.  At this point we were all so over it!  Caleb didn't understand why she beat him up because he said she never told him to stop throwing the snowballs.  I again reiterated the fact that if he's teasing he should pay attention to the other persons body language & facial expressions to make sure he's not bugging them too much.  We've had this talk many times in our family because we do tend to play tease & sometimes it ends with hurt feelings.  I definitely think there are times when parents need to get involved but in this case I was just going to deal with it with Caleb.  I figured I'd just walk the kids to and from school for the next few days & it would be fine.  I was proud of Caleb because when the girl came to the door he was the first one to say something.  He immediately told her he was sorry for throwing snowballs at her.  I didn't coach him on what to say when they came over.  I was proud of him for saying sorry for his part in the "crime".  Only an hour before he'd been crying & saying some pretty mean things about her so it was great to see him so mature about it.  I think he definitely learned a good lesson about teasing!  No more drama!