If it were me, I would try not to look too far ahead into the future. It's winter, unless you live in like Texas or Florida it's gonna be indoor play for a while. I would just make sure to have her play at your house as much as possible, invite over the kids she wants to play with so you have the control over the situation.
I would want an apology FROM THE KID. Yes the parents have apologized but I want that kid to come up to the door and ask to apologize to your daughter. My son has ADHD and ODD and while he has never gone after someone like that, he did hit occasionally when he was younger and I made him apologize every time. I want to know that the kid is sorry. I think this has made a HUGE difference with my son and now that he's older he does a good apology when he messes up, and with medication/maturity he's way better at considering others.
I would also want to know that the parents are taking this seriously. I assume you showed them the video? I would check in with them, like hey we do NOT feel comfortable with them playing together for a while. How can we make sure DD is comfortable, will you be monitoring play at your house (in the event that your DD does drift over there in a group at some point)? Is there a plan to work on his anger issues? What does that plan look like? Do they follow through with the plan? Cause lots of parents will say "oh we're getting him into therapy", but then when you have to call a bunch of places and get on wait lists then a few weeks goes by and it becomes "well nothing's happened since then, it was probably a one off, I'm sure he's fine now". I would definitely not assume they are doing what they need to do, for sure check in and follow up.
ETA: has the kid seen the video? I mean I guess that's his parents job but if it were my son I would sit him down and make him watch the video so he can see how awful it is. He may not remember details, how many times he hit her etc because in his head it happened quickly.
This is so hard! I think ultimately what is important here above all else is what you want to teach your daughter about how we deal with abuse. You can feel bad for the boy being excluded or your friendships being harmed, but ultimately those are not your problems to handle - your problem is what your daughter is going to take away from this scenario and how she will apply that to her adult life.
My inclination is to say that this friendship is over because there is zero tolerance for abuse. If her husband one day beats her up, do you want her to stay in that relationship because it's hard to coparent after divorce or because her family and his family love each other and she enjoys spending time with his siblings? If that wouldn't be your advice for an adult, model that now, even if it is hard. Being abused IS hard. It's not simple to detangle a life with another person but that's ultimately what needs to happen when safety is at risk.
I do realize a 9 year old is still developing and will hopefully change and be a normal human being, but that part is not your part to deal with. Yours is your daughter and how she views this situation. Telling her she doesn't have to put up with this behavior and showing how to actually follow though on that are two different things.
Post by maudefindlay on Dec 11, 2023 10:11:25 GMT -5
I agree with wildrice. I'd not be asking about if the kid is getting therapy etc that's not in your control, I'd just be separating the kids and explaining to DD that assault is not ok and is even against the law. OP stated she was scared watching that video, listen to your intuition. It's nice having neighbors with kids and when the adults like each other, but now you are experiencing the bad part of that which is when things go south. It will be awkward for sure. It would be easier if they even lived a block or 2 away, but they don't and I'd still say no more. We had 2 neighborhood boys, brothers, who were disrespectful to adults and unkind to other neighborhood kids and a couple parents finally had enough and said those boys were not welcome at their house or in their yard again. I think that's about all you can dictate here. You can control your own yard and your DD can invite whoever she wants to your yard/your house.
I have never seen this rage and anger from him before. They have gotten into disagreements before, but... The video was much worse than any of us ever expected. When she told me, I assumed it was more like pushing/shoving
I suggest you hold space for the possibility that what is most extreme compared to previous incidents isn't the behavior itself but rather the understanding and documentation of the incident. Your daughter minimized and normalized things when describing it. She may have done so before. Again I come back to the analogy to other violence. The severity often isn't obvious to those outside the situation and it can take repeat incidents before it's noticed.
Post by whattheheck on Dec 11, 2023 12:19:00 GMT -5
If and when the kid apologizes to your child please consider the response “Thank you” instead of the knee jerk “it’s okay.” She may need to practice it.
This would be game over for us for a long time. I’m saying this as someone whose child is still dealing with the trauma caused by a violent child in her classroom 3 years ago.
Your DD owes him NOTHING. It is not her job to help him learn to manage his emotions/self, it is not her job to be the guinea pig. It isn’t her job to sacrifice her physical and emotional well being for him to outgrow this behavior. That is for his parents to help him figure out. He has already shown that he will target her. It would be a very long time before I’d loosen restrictions and I would need to know that he hasn’t repeated those behaviors for a sustained period of time.
I do think you need to have a frank talk with the parents about logistics moving forward with the expectation that they will cooperate to keep your daughter safe. I would not allow her to be around the person who assaulted her without direct supervision and only when unavoidable (like the birthday parties). I would 100% set the expectation that he never seek her out and that he avoid areas where she is and, for practicalities sake, I’d expect her and your other kids to steer clear, too. I would remove them from your emergency contacts and would ask them to remove you from his.
I know some people will think this is harsh. They are welcome to hop on FaceTime and deal with the fallout we are still experiencing if they think this is too much.
This would be game over for us for a long time. I’m saying this as someone whose child is still dealing with the trauma caused by a violent child in her classroom 3 years ago.
Your DD owes him NOTHING. It is not her job to help him learn to manage his emotions/self, it is not her job to be the guinea pig. It isn’t her job to sacrifice her physical and emotional well being for him to outgrow this behavior. That is for his parents to help him figure out. He has already shown that he will target her. It would be a very long time before I’d loosen restrictions and I would need to know that he hasn’t repeated those behaviors for a sustained period of time.
I do think you need to have a frank talk with the parents about logistics moving forward with the expectation that they will cooperate to keep your daughter safe. I would not allow her to be around the person who assaulted her without direct supervision and only when unavoidable (like the birthday parties). I would 100% set the expectation that he never seek her out and that he avoid areas where she is and, for practicalities sake, I’d expect her and your other kids to steer clear, too. I would remove them from your emergency contacts and would ask them to remove you from his.
I know some people will think this is harsh. They are welcome to hop on FaceTime and deal with the fallout we are still experiencing if they think this is too much.
This is good advice. Hopefully the parents of this kid are on board, but sometimes parents are not on board. If they don’t prevent him from playing outside with the neighborhood kids, then it will be on OP to navigate having her daughter come to their yard only or play inside. Unfortunately some parents do get really defensive of their kids and don’t follow boundaries. I hope OP doesn’t have to deal with too much drama from the parents.
I was raised to tolerate a lot of poor behaviors that are described today as abuse. I also heard a lot of "we must forgive others for their sins" dogma during my youth and took it to heart as well. All of this absolutely killed my sense of self worth as a young adult except I was too naive to realize it. What's followed is not a happy outcome. If you feel that your DD should never tolerate this kind of behavior from anyone, then you have to cut this child's presence out of your immediate personal life. If they are both invited to a mutual friend's birthday, I would have to either not let my child attend or I'd have to be that overbearing mom who stays for the duration of the party to keep a sharp eye on my kid. There is unfortunately no in between here. I know this feels hard since your personal life is so intertwined with this family. Doing the right thing is never easy. I'm sorry your family is dealing with this.
Post by penguingrrl on Dec 11, 2023 15:05:41 GMT -5
I am so sorry. It sounds like a really shitty and unexpected situation from people you cared deeply about. I hope his parents are as on board as they need to be in solving this because it's going to take a lot of hard work for their son to get the help he needs. In the meantime, while working with therapists for him, the responsibility is now on them to keep him away from your daughter to every extent possible (and I personally would be alerting the school that they need to be kept apart as well). Your daughter shouldn't have to skip parties or face him at parties, they should be keeping him home from parties they would both be at.
I think it’s really interesting how the responses to this incident differ from the responses when a poster’s daughter was sucker punched following a hockey game. In the other incident people didn’t even think she should contact the hockey league!
This boy physically assaulted her, or he didn't. If you're in shock over this you need to shake it off. Plenty of us have to survive without a carpool.
I'm not saying we can't make changes, but completely erasing him from our lives is going to be nearly impossible unless we sell our house and move to a different side of town. And how do we do this so my daughter doesn't regret telling us because she will feel left out? We have joint birthday parties, even if we don't carpool together they are in a group that walks in and out of school together. They do activities together, etc. Sure we can pull our kids out of them but she's still going to see him at school, parties, and every time he leaves his house. The younger ones are currently best friends, do we stop them from playing as well?
The parents are taking it seriously. I imagine they will get him into therapy. They have apologized to us and we aren't carpooling. For now we are taking it a day at a time.
This is why I said to get others on board, or she will be excluded. He needs to be supervised. She shouldn't have to come inside, because someone needs to be outside watching. And no, i wouldn't let the kids go in their house now. And I wouldn't carpool unless he's sitting in the front seat and can't get at her.
The safety of my child is my only responsibility. That's the only thing I'd be focusing on. My response would be to not have them be alone without an adult, if my child wanted to continue to have contact with the other child. I would not be asking for details on what the parents are doing for him (i.e. therapy). That's not really OPs business anyway.