A Little Bit of Teasing

DuckyBoy is doing great so far in second grade, and he loves the after-school program.

"Mommy, after-school makes school fun!" he said when I picked him up the first day.

The downside of 2 hours of less-structured time with his peers is the chance for situations he doesn't know how to deal with.

Yesterday, he mentioned being teased. It came up recently at the playground by our home, too -- and I just don't know what to tell him to say or do.

At the playground he had a Transformer toy and another kid wanted him to either let him see it or transform it to robot mode from vehicle mode, and DB didn't want to do either. I suppose I should have just made DB hand it over and been done with it. But we just got it, and I have more sympathy for wanting to keep your mitts on your own toy when it's new. (I've got my own "other kids break stuff" anxiety issues.)

So then the other kid was saying "Oh, you don't know how," and similar stuff. Not really trash-talking or bullying him, I think the boy just liked the toy too and wanted to see it change.

And, he wouldn't let it go. I held the toy for a while, but every time DB took it back one of 2 boys would buzz around him. So we finally left after only about 15 minutes.

As for what happened at school, DB he said someone was teasing him about being in love (to which I said, Well, other boys your age don't understand). I think he said it was the same boy who did some similarly, not-that-bad teasing of him last year. Then DB said his little girlfriend joined in, which I think is what really got him.

Now, I never know for sure with him,, right? She might have said something he misinterpreted at that point.

But anyway, I am at a loss for how to help him learn to deal with the other kids in this type of situation.

Sometimes ignoring it or walking away isn't possible.

And sometimes it's not so severe that an adult's intervention is required. (Also, I don't want him to rely on that for every little thing. Right now it's his default: "Mommy, come talk to him.")

There's not that much on the web for little kids; a couple of sites offer some tips, but I'd love to have more tools for little kids like DuckyBoy.

I don't expect the school to solve it, or make all the teasing stop (there is an anti-bullying policy, but the instance so far hardly seems to qualify --at least as far as it was described to me), but I do hope together we can give DB some coping skills.