Question
Here’s a topic I’ve been struggling with that I just saw John address in a Facebook post – mean kids. My oldest son (9) was complaining about some kids at his summer camp saying things like “raise your hand if you like Ben” and then making a point of not raising their hands, or kicking him off a team, even though the person picking teams picked him. On the one hand, I dealt with this kind of stuff as a kid with minimal adult interaction. On the other hand, as a teenager I dealt with some real honest to God threatening and physical bullying that should have been handled by an adult and wasn’t. Where to draw the line? If the kind of behavior the camp kids are displaying isn’t corrected by an adult, won’t they just grow up to be the kind of kids that threaten and physically bully later, and general jerks as adults? I did speak to the counselor and the mean kid stuff seems to have stopped. With my older son, bursting into tears after a day at camp is NOT normal. I would take the same thing from my younger son with a grain of salt, based on their personalities.
