does your child ever get roughed up by friends?

[boongirl]

I am posting this in parenting issues because I am hoping to get comments from parents with kids of all ages, not just toddlers.

What do you do when your toddler is getting roughed up by friends her age? Other toddlers who are pushing, pulling, hitting, tackling, poking, and just in general hurting her? These are all 2+ year olds and they are dealing with toddler property law issues - mine, mine, mine. My child is grabby when other kids have her toys but some of her friends are downright aggressive. She had been tackled and pushed into a wall and pinched and wacked on the head and slammed in the face. And that was just in the last week and by only a couple of different kids. These are my friends kids, babes we hang with weekly since the babes were born. They are all raised AP, GD and are all great moms and dads. I don't blame the parents at all because I know the kids are just learning to express themselves. What the moms do is take the aggressor away immediately and talk to them about what happened and have them come back and try to talk to dd about what happened and apologize. But still, my poor dd is getting beat up a bit and today told me she did not want to go play with her little friend who roughed her up at dinner last night!

Dh says I need to find dd some girl friends (these are all boys) or just stay away for a while. I think maybe we need more distraction. This happens mostly at parks when there is only grass and no playground or at the instigators house where they are concerned about their toys.

I've also been talking with dd about saying "no, stop" and running to me for cover. I absolutely will not let her hurt her friend back. And, I should also say that she is not doing anything. The other moms agree. She is just playing with toys they want or sometimes just standing where they don't want her to stand.

Does anyone have experience with this? What to do?

[flyingspaghettimama]

Hey yah! That's how it was with my daughter between about ages 2-3.5. For a while we called her The Tiniest Bully Magnet. I really worried that somehow this would last forever. It doesn't. It sounds like you're doing the right things - starting to use her words, saying in a nice loud voice "stop!" or something like that.

P.S. Even girls did this to DD. So I'm not sure it would be all better with girls. Kids do this, but it's the other parents' responsibility to deal with it, which it sounds like they are. At the same time, I did limit playdates somewhat until the worst had been gone through (i.e. one playdate a week per kid).

[boongirl]

Originally Posted by loraeileen

Hey yah! That's how it was with my daughter between about ages 2-3.5. For a while we called her The Tiniest Bully Magnet. I really worried that somehow this would last forever. It doesn't. It sounds like you're doing the right things - starting to use her words, saying in a nice loud voice "stop!" or something like that.

P.S. Even girls did this to DD. So I'm not sure it would be all better with girls. Kids do this, but it's the other parents' responsibility to deal with it, which it sounds like they are. At the same time, I did limit playdates somewhat until the worst had been gone through (i.e. one playdate a week per kid).

Thanks, that sounds like what we will do too, limit the playdates. I know girls can be this way, too. It just happens that we play mostly with boys.

thanks

[GranoLLLy-girl]

Playdates are so overrated. I love the book HOLD ON TO YOUR KIDS.
Check it out if you have time.
I have found that if I limit the playdates in our lives to one a week (or sometimes nothing for a couple of weeks), my kids are happier and are much better self-regulators (meaning, they whine less, recognize when they are tired or hungry and not over-involved in what is going on around them).
Mine are 3 and 18 months.

[4evermom]

There are a couple of kids that my ds does not play well with and I'm going to try to limit his exposure to them. One is a same age boy (almost4) whose house we go by frequently in the neighborhood. When we stop to play, the boys just fight and push over possession of toys. I want to avoid him because he is being raised in a very controlling punitive way and I'd like to limit what ds may witness of that. The other is a friend's child (5) who is autistic and very single minded about what toy he wants to use and how. It is impossible to guide his play in any way. The boys fight over things. I think we'll try to meet at neutral territory next time with no toys.

Probably the best solution for your dd would be if you could find some nice older kids to play with. Then, they aren't competing for the same toys because they are at a different place developmentally and they have better social skills. At 2, I thought playdates were more trouble than they were worth but ds loved following older kids and they generally were very nice to him.

[marybethorama]

Arggh.

I just : deleted a long reply.

What I was saying was that this happens pretty frequently with older kids at our playgroup. (ds is almost 4 now, the older kids range from 4-5).

It makes me really upset to see it happen. Because ds is older, I emphasize and offer suggestions on what he can say or how they can negotiate. It's actually been working well. It's a lot of work for me though. Since I've seen ds play very contentedly with other kids of various ages I think the issue lies with these specific kids.

I must add that these kids are fine when they're on their own, it's just when they get in a group that this behavior starts.

Since we never see them outside of playgroup and sometimes church, I don't worry about it too much.

Having read "Hold on to Your Kids" I also don't worry about the small number of playdates ds has.

Mary Beth of Paul (9), Harry(7), and Timmy(almost 4)

[stafl]

if she doesn't want to play with them, she shouldn't have to. Let your DD decide whether or not she wants to be friends with these children. Let her know that when she does play with them, if she wants to leave, you will respect that and you will go home. Let her know she doesn't have to be mistreated by anyone for any reason. Talk to her a lot about it, because that is how she will learn to respect and sympathize with other people. Talk about how she feels, ask her lots of questions, help her learn words to express her feelings. You can't do anything about the other kids, but you can help your child not be as aggressive as they are.