Statute of Limitations…

Posted on the 07 September 2013 by Drowqueen @theburnedhand

As a parent, you sometimes have these events that happen in your children’s lives and you don’t hear about them until later.  Much later.  At that point, you have to decide what to do.  Apparently at the end of one of my child’s soccer games, where the players go to shake hands and say “good game”, a boy made his hand into a claw and raked it along my child’s arm and said “bad game”.  If she had told me right then, I would have gone over to his parents and said something.  Unfortunately, I didn’t hear about it until later.  At that point, I talked it over with my husband and we decided the moment was gone.

My child saw this boy another time and he was not very nice to her again.  He was saying things that were rude and generally trying to make my girls miserable.  I didn’t hear about what was said and what went on until I was tucking them into bed that night.  At that point, I thought it was too late so say something yet again.  I did the best I could at that time and said what I thought was good advice, if he can’t play nice with you, don’t play with him.  Period.

To be honest with you, what he did to her on the soccer field was unsportsmanlike conduct and I was floored by it.  I wish I had known then, but I had to make a judgment call and decide if I could just call this mom out of the blue and tell her what had happened.  I should have.  I really should have.  I would want to know.

The thing is, I let other people tell me to avoid conflict.  My husband doesn’t handle things the way I do, and would rather avoid talking to them altogether than deal with this.  I don’t know if saying something would have changed anything…it would have made it uncomfortable for a while.  But sometimes conflicts are needed in order to grow.  If you are always avoiding situations, things will stay the way they are.  So even though the self-imposed “statute of limitations” is over in this situation, I know I should have been a grown-up and tattled.  Where is my parenting handbook?  They forgot this section.  Sigh.