The Fish Incident

Yesterday was an interesting day. I got to see an example of people at their best and unfortunately people at their worst, all in the space of a single afternoon.

We were at the lake, my in-laws, the kids and me, and a woman with what seemed to be a hundred little girls of various ages. My daughter, being the little butterfly that she is, right away made friends. MM (my daughter) is four and the youngest girl there had to be at least five or six.

The first thing to tip me off that these might not be the most angelic group of children was that they asked MM if they could borrow her shovel...and then her pail...and a couple more shovels...a strainer...pretty soon they had taken every toy that we'd brought to the beach. Not one of them thought to give MM something to play with even though they were her toys. I said nothing and let her deal. I got slightly annoyed when Gus went to use our watering can (probably to help the girls who were playing with it, by the way) and one of the girls shooed him away because they were playing with it. It's his watering can! I screamed internally, but still I kept my mouth shut. I can't get involved in everything my kids are experiencing; they have to learn to speak up for themselves.

Later in the afternoon as I was in the water with Gus, there was a sudden disturbance on the shore. Apparently the girls caught a fish. It's a pretty typical thing for the kids to do, so I didn't think anything of it at first. MM ran out of the water to see what her new friends were up to.

At first when I looked up, I thought they were carrying the fish around by a fin. This would have been disturbing enough, but then I got a better look: the poor thing had a stick jutting in one gill and out the other. I pointed this out to the lifeguard who went to rescue the poor thing's body before it could be further defiled. Apparently the girls were about to poke its eyes out.

I have to say that I am incredibly proud of my daughter, and I told her so. She didn't like what she saw, and she spoke up. She told her new, older, gang of friends that what they were doing was not nice. And there were real tears glistening off her cheeks when she saw that the fish had been bleeding. My daughter may be a lot of things, but she has a truly compassionate heart, and the courage to stand up and speak out against what she feels is unjust.

Part of her character is undoubtedly just her personality, but I think part of it may stem from having a brother with special needs. She's come to his defense, even though he's the older, on several occasions. Even when a big bear of a man yelled at Gus one day, she wasn't afraid; she went right to hi and in her most polite and endearing voice, apologized for what her brother did, and the man felt about two inches tall for picking on a little kid.

When MM does something inappropriate, I check her immediately. No, you can't listen to loud music when someone is sleeping - you wouldn't like if they did it to you. No, you are not allowed to put your hands on your hips and glare at mommy when you're angry at me. No, you don't get your way by having a hissy-fit, you suck it up when you can't have something, and maybe if you behave well enough that might change. I would have never in a million years sat by and watched her harm an innocent animal.

This brings me back to my original thought. The little girls at the beach were not being very nice, sugar-and-spice little girls. But I don't blame them. They were not alone; they had a "responsible" adult supervising them (if you want to call it that). But the woman said nothing. she sat and watched them torture this poor creature whose worst crime was probably chasing after a pretzel thrown in the water.

I am constantly amazed at people who complain about how rotten kids have become over the past couple of generations. Well hell! It's not their fault! No one wants to discipline or be the bad guy; no one wants to be the one to say "no" to their kids. "Empower them!" parents have been told. "Raise their self esteem!" But this has gone far beyond the intended limit, I fear. Because we've got a generation of kids who can't cope with losing, who can't take correction or criticism, and who have a sad deficiency of empathy. And no, it's not all kids. I think finally parents are starting to see how maybe the loosey-goosey style of parenting may have some flaws. Unfortunately, there are still an awful lot of parents who think the word "no" should be taboo. My daughter was crying over the cruelty of those little girls, and their "mother" (she was someone's mother if not everyone's) couldn't be bothered to say, "No. Stop. That's wrong." She left that up to a four year old.