A few weeks ago, we received a phone call from Mal’s teacher.
He had been in a fight with another of his classmates and had found himself in deep trouble.
Not only that but he had come up worse than the other kid in the fight and had been thumped across the head.
By the time he got home form school, it had formed into a huge blue – black bruise.
Mal had been particularly quiet, this afternoon but I had not pushed things, not searched for answers.
Sometimes, it’s better to leave well enough alone, when it comes to Mal.
The teacher called late into the night.
She felt badly because she had punished Mal for his actions and as the story evolved, it seemed, that Malachy had started out as the most innocent of parties.
You see, lately Mal had been allowed to have lunch with the ‘main stream’ children and play in the playground that wasn’t locked behind him by a huge metal fence. He was allowed to roam the school grounds free.
He had been given the opportunity to interact with the ‘normal’ children.
What happened was that one of these so called ‘normal’ kids had encouraged Malachy and another of the special needs children to get into a fight with one another.
Mal has a hard time with controlling agression as it is, so when NK (normal kid) told Mal that his friend had called him a nasty name, Mal became angry. The NK apparently got a whole lot for his money when he successfully enticed the two special needs kids into a full on fight.
Fists and all.
The two boys hurt themselves and each other before the whole thing was pulled apart. A bunch of main stream kids, laughing and jeering on the sidelines, calling out the most horrid of terms and generally showing a level of narrowmindedness, I thought had long been banned from the playground, were also reprimanded but not punished.
I am in no way excusing Mal for his actions.
What he did was wrong and he should have been punished.
What it comes down to is this:
How do you teach accountability?
How do I make Mal see that what he did was wrong?
How do I teach him that if one boy tells him to take a swing at a long time friend, that he shouldn’t just do it because he was told to.
How do I teach him to think before he acts?
These are things I am finding hard to come to terms with.
Reason, sensibility, not to be so gullible, not to be so easily led
because ‘mainstream’ or ‘special needs’, without those things, kids will get themselves into trouble
every single time
and okay, it’s just a playground fight now
but what is going to happen in the future?
If he is so easily led astray, when he is older and cannot differenciate right from wrong,
what will happen to him then?
There are lots of nasty people in the world, who will take advantage of him.
I need to know,
how can I make him street savvy?