A Mother Asks
...In recent weeks things have escalated into what can almost be described as full-fledged gang war between the older and the younger boys...
Dear Michael and Debi,
Our son is seven years old. As soon as church lets out, the boys, young and old, are running around on the deck, out in the street, jumping on each other, and many times the “play” gets out of hand. In recent weeks things have escalated into what can almost be described as full-fledged gang war between the older and the younger boys. The older boys taunt the younger ones; the younger ones start chasing and jumping on the older ones, and someone gets hurt. We seem to be the only ones at our church that show any concern over this situation.
Many times we find ourselves intervening. Two weeks ago after an evening meeting I came around the side of the church building to find a group of five 10-13 year old boys around our son with one of them holding my son’s neck from behind and smashing his face into the wall. The “mama bear” definitely came out in me and I jumped in. The older boys stated that our son had been jumping on them, etc. (which our son did confess to) but in retaliation our son had been ruffed up pretty badly.
I read with much interest “Sorry, I’m tied up at the moment.” Both my husband and I were raised with certain expectations of decorum around “grown ups.” Although in an informal setting such as camping I understand that it can be great fun where these lines become relaxed. We were a bit undone one night when we had our pastor and his wife over for a visit, and our son ran in the room, jumped in the pastor’s lap and started tickling him. We realized this is an area that we need to do some training, but with the situation at our church where younger boys are dukeing it out in the street after church with man-size older boys, it’s hard for our son to distinguish where to draw the line.
I’m sorry to have been so long-winded about this, but our situation seems so different from what you described in either “A whole Boy” or “ Rowdy Boys.” Our son is a boy that can sit still for hours. One of his favorite things to do is sit and have me read to him. He often begs for me to read “just one more chapter” long after my voice begins to wear out. We live on two and a half acres where he has all sorts of room to run, we have pigs and sheep and a pony, but like I mentioned before I often have to encourage him to go outside or stay outside with us. But here recently, when our son gets around other boys he goes a bit nuts, me too. This has all come on us so suddenly that it has really caught us off guard. We would greatly appreciate any suggestions you have to offer.
