Don't you hate it when someone is mean to your kid? Some lessons which our kids must learn are harder for a parent to face than others. I can't exactly do anything about it every time someone is a meany. These are some of the hard lessons in the lives of little ones.
We have great, Godly neighbors. We appreciate them so much, and our boys have become best friends. The boys, though two years older than Ava, have played with Ava for the past almost four years with few complaints. I would say there have been no complaints, but, seriously, she's a girly girl and they are all boy! Plus, she thinks she's going to marry Austin, and no 8 year old boy wants to deal with that from a girl. Still, they play together. Even so, last year I was so pleased to discover that we had a new neighbor girl who wanted to play with the kids. She is also the same age as the boys, but it was nice that Ava had a little girl with whom she could play.
Today's hurtful scenario went like this...Ava and I were home alone, and she wanted me to text to see if Austin could play. He was watching a movie and relaxing, which is what I told Ava even though I knew it was a nice way of saying that Austin didn't really want to play with a 6 year old little girl. I can understand that to a certain extent.
30 minutes later, Ava went outdoors alone to discover that Austin was playing in his back yard with our older neighbor girl. Ava is a sweet, naive child, so she went to the fence and shouted for Austin thinking he was done with his movie and would absolutely want to play with her. She loves Austin so much and always loves playing with him, so why wouldn't he want to play with her?
He blatantly ignored her and wouldn't even turn in her direction. The little girl saw Ava and still said nothing, pretending that Ava wasn't there. Ava shouted and shouted until I finally told her to come into the house. I know they heard her. I'm pretty sure the entire neighborhood heard Ava yelling for him. By the time I talked to her about not shouting for him any more and told her that he wasn't being very nice, she was in tears because Austin ignored her and didn't want to play with her. Ouch. Poor baby girl. I gave her lots of hugs and held her for a few minutes, and, by then, her brother was home and ready to defend her.
Yes, Lukas defended his sister. He's currently restricted from playing with his friends. I won't go into the reason for that. He asked for permission to go confront Austin, which I gave him. Why not? He went to the fence and asked him why he was ignoring Ava, and this resulted in both an apology from Austin as well as an invitation for Ava to go play with them (but the mama said no at this point). When Lukas came back into the house to tell me this, he was strutting with pride. It was definitely one great big brother moment!
I know that a lot of kids do this kind of thing. Mine have never done this, and I hope that they don't. It just hurts my heart to watch my little girl cry because someone that she looks up to as her friend has completely disregarded her feelings. Unfortunately, these problems have become more frequent with our little friend as he gets older. It's hard to watch, but I don't think there's much I can do about it other than to remind my kids to make the right choice when they're faced with the same situation.
I remember those kinds of hurts from when I was a little girl.I wish they didn't have to face them, but we can't prevent our children from seeing the world. I am grateful that I was the one who was here and able to help Ava through this tough lesson. Because of that, I'll count this as a blessing. It's a lesson we all learn at some point. Better to learn it in the back yard with mama ready to give her a hug than on a school playground where no one really cares enough to wipe her tears or where she's afraid to shed a tear in the first place. Yes, this was a difficult lesson for her, but, if we look closely at the challenges in our lives, we can always find a blessing somewhere.
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