He Beat Me!

The other day, we brought Ace to his favourite Ang Mo Kio Mac Donald.. where there is this helicoptor shaped playground...

There was a group of children playing there and they were all cousins and there was like this ring leader amongst them.. And Ace is very often attracted to big groups of children and kept sticking to them but they did not want to play with him..

Suddenly, Ace came out from the playground and cried loudly with alot of tears in his eyes... When I asked him what happened, Ace said, "He beat me..."

And he kept crying and crying.. I have never seen him cry so sadly at all.. so I was a little worried. I understand some children are rough and play rough... but so far, Ace has been able to take care of himself when he meets bullies...

And then I kept asking him where they beat him... Ace just cried and cried.. so I asked Ace if they slapped his face... and Ace said YES...

Wah, that got me very hot.. while it is my policy to not get involved in a child's fight because they can settle it themselves, I really buay tahan.. if they really slapped Ace, I will want to slap them back liao lor...

This is cos when I was very young, I was slapped by an older kid.. and I never forgot tat incident and how humiliated it made me feel.. tat is why I hate it when pple try to slap me.. even in jest... I still see tat older kid around and even though he is an adult now, I can still recognize him and I still will shoot dagger eyes at him....I regret not standing up for myself then..

So I told Ace, "The only way you can overcome this is to face it.. come, we go and you tell me who beat you..."

I walked into the playground with Ace and then there was a little girl who came out and told me.. "The boy is fighting, he is beating people inside...." so I knew I was dealing with someone slightly aggressive...

We stood there for a while and then the boy came out and so I asked him, "Did you beat him?" while pointing to Ace... If they did, I wanted them to apologize and shake hands...

"No, I didn't! He beat me first!" And his gang of cousins started saying tat Ace scolded them stupid and that Ace is naughty and they kept repeating, "We don't want to play with him!"

But they quickly hid inside the playground again... So I asked Ace again, "Did they beat you? Where did they beat you?"

And found out that they only beat Ace's hands. So tat cooled me down a little. I had to think fast.. While I know Ace is sometimes not consistent in his description of things that happened, I have never seen him scold someone stupid just because they dun want to play with him.. he usually just walks away.. so I figured what probably happened was that Ace wanted to play with them and they didn't want to play with him.. and he might have tried to force his way into the group and they just wanted to push him away and may have hit his hand as a result... No matter wat, I trust my own child first before I trust other pple...

And thinking back, I guess he was crying cos he was most upset by the fact that he was rejected and pushed out of a group..

So I asked Ace again when he cooled down.. "Ace, do you want to play with them?"

"Yes.." he said..

"If you want to play with them, then you have to stop crying.. if they do not want to play with you, just play with someone else, there is no need to cry..."

And he happily ran to play with tat same group of children. By this time, their parent came out and suddenly, they all behaved themselves and started to play with ace even though one minute ago, they were all pointing fingers at him...

But somehow, after a short while, they started to ask him to go away again.. maybe they changed the rules of the game or wat.. watever the case, we decided to go home cos I don't like those rowdy children.

Anyway, we never spoke about tat incident again.. but it made me think of what I said to Ace...

You see, I have a childhood friend who is very close to me.. for some unknown reason, she drifted apart and no matter how I tried to reach out to her via phone, sms, email, she just refuses to come and clear the air and be friends again... and i was very disturbed by it.. and everyone says the same thing to me.. "If people dun want to play with you, you just play with someone else..." But I just cannot help but feel upset..

Maybe this incident happened to remind me that I really should let go.. sometimes when pple ready, they will just come back...

PS: I noticed that Ace likes to play with pple who push him away. In dancing school, some naughty girls push him away (they are usually indian) but he will pick himself up and go and smile at them and play with them again.. saw this happen SOOOOOO many times in diff scenerios and situations.. wonder why my son SOOOOOOOO strange.. sometimes I really wonder why someone with a small heart like mine has such a big heart like him... hahahahaha.. when i was y0ung, I was super duper xiao qi lor!:P

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