Both my boys love soccer.  My almost 8 year old has been playing since weeks before turning 4, hardly ever missing a game or practice.  Given the choice to do anything in the world there is no question what he would pick – soccer with his teammates.  When hiring a babysitter I always have an unusual first question:  do you play soccer and if so how well? Any woman who babysits my children is required to act as a goalie and a passer.  So last summer as both my boys heading out to the local park with the sitter, soccer ball in hand, I was heading off to work.

A few hours later I received a hysterical call from my older son.  At first I couldn’t make out what was going on.  He is a tough boy, rarely prone to crying over physical injuries.  He was whaling into the phone.  I asked him to put the sitter on the phone.  “What happened?”  “There are boys at the park and they stole his ball.”  “So he is this upset over a ball?” was my bewildered response.  This hardly seemed a tragedy.  “Put him back on” I said.  “What happened?”  I asked again.  This time he was able to calm down.  “I was playing with the boys, and I was winning and they got mad and told me I hurt one of them, but I didn’t so they took my ball and stole it and I don’t know where it is.”  Now I got the full picture.  My sweet boy who only wanted to find some friends with whom to play soccer had a prized possession stolen as revenge for winning.  I confirmed the story with the sitter who volunteered that the boys were “mean, nasty and jealous and older than E (who is so tall he normally passes for a 10 year old).” She told my son it was not a good idea to play with them, but of course he chose to do so anyway.

My inner mama bear wanted to leave work, drive over to the park and take those boys on.  I was going to go visit their parents.  I was going to yell at the boys. I was going to make them feel awful about what they done and I was going to revenge my little boy.

I did none of that of course.  In spite of my blood boiling, my heart racing and my breath shallow I closed my eyes and counted to 10.  And then I told my son this simple truth “Sometimes life sucks.  Sometimes bad things happen to good people.  You didn’t deserve that to happen to you.  But guess what.  Those boys, they are mean for a reason.  They are probably not from nice families, their life is probably not nice.  They don’t have a nice mommy and daddy and grandparents who love them and teach them to do the right thing and take them to soccer practice.  So they are angry because of everything you have and they don’t.  So they took it out on you.”

I want my kids to know:  even if life isn’t fair, it can almost always be fixed, if you only look for a solution you will find one.  “Will get you a new ball” I said.  “Don’t play with those boys because when people are mean, and rude you are best cutting them off from your life.”  To the best of my knowledge he has never again played soccer with those boys.  He told me once:  “I saw those boys in the park again. You know the ones.  The ones who’s parents don’t love them. They wanted to play with my ball but I told them ‘no.’” I opened my mouth to correct him and then closed it again.  Perhaps their parents did love them.  But what a great way for him to look at a person who does you wrong:  with pity, and with lack of contact.

Have you had a similar situation?  Let me know how you’ve handled it in the comments below.