I ask because I’m having trouble deciding if it is a bad thing to pick an 8 year old up by his shirt and threaten his very life for throwing rocks at your baby or if it can be deemed completely justifiable. On the one hand, the attacking and subsequent whopping-of-a-lifetime of a child is probably a never a good idea but he threw rocks…at my 10 month old. I’m so very torn.

We have an adorable park nearby with a beautiful pool. It only has one baby swing so we don’t get down there too often. Ben’s an all day sort of swinger. If you pull him out too early, you’d better have something bigger and better to do or you’re going to have a blood-curdling scream followed pouty face for the rest of the day. We don’t want to be “those people” always hogging the swing. Not to mention, the times (Okay, really it was only one time, but I don’t want everyone to think I’m a quitter so we’ll pretend like we went more than once) we went down there, we were, mid-swing, accosted by loud, cackling teenage girls proclaiming how “weird” they must look swinging on children’s swings. “We must look SO weird! OMG!” Of course, picture it being said in Spanish.

This afternoon I wanted to, again, drive to the park that I like best. It’s about 10 minutes away and through downtown, which many of you may find ridiculous since we have a park less than a 10 minute walk away but we were accosted by squeeling teenage girls. Since it was 5pm and since he’s lame, Eric wasn’t so hot on the idea of driving through downtown during rush hour just to go to a park we’d always had great experiences at instead of, you know, the one in which we were (say it with me) accosted. So, I offered up a second park, a 5 minute drive, that’s supposedly just as nice. “Why don’t we walk down to our park? I’m really hurting for exercise,” he says. Fine. I only bring all this up so there’s a record of me trying to avoid the situation all together. I didn’t wake up this morning and decide I was going to start planning out how to vivisect a child. I tried to avoid it. Blame it all on Eric.

We get Ben all packed into his stroller and walk down to the park. There are two kids, a girl about 10 and a boy about 8, in the I’m-so-freaking-bored belly down position on the swings. They notice us pulling up and they get their show off shoes on. You know how kids get when there are new people around. “Look what I can do!” So we pop Ben in the infant swing and he starts his usual hysterical laughing…until the little boy starts throwing rocks at his friend.

Now, let me say, had it not been my baby, the following would not have occured. I would have had a clear head. I would’ve said something along the lines of, “Please don’t throw rocks. You could hurt the baby.” Of course, “the baby” in this instance was my son, so clear head and “possibility of injury or pain” were not coexisting.

The first handful went towards Eric’s legs. I said nothing because the kid immediately corrected himself, turned sideways and threw the rocks at his friends feet away from Eric and, more importantly, Ben. However, the more his friend would swing and the louder she’d yell for him to stop, the harder he’d throw the rocks at her feet. They were pinging off the side of the swingset and popping me in my ankles. Not a big deal, they were no where near Ben, I wasn’t going to freak out.

And then the kid decided to throw a handful in the air.
Over my head, over my husband’s head but most importantly, over my 10 month old’s head.

“WOAH! Could you not do that again?!?” This is a response I’m torn on. I could’ve said, “Could you please not do that? You don’t want to hurt the baby.” Which probably would’ve been a much more grown up, kind thing to say. However, I could’ve also said, “Do that again and I’ll chop off your hand!” Which I’m pretty proud of avoiding. As I said, I’m torn.

Ben was swinging for a few moments more, the kid was throwing more rocks at his friend and decided, “Hey, let’s throw them directly toward the baby and the white guy this time.” They thwacked off the bottom of Ben’s swing, off my ankles and Eric’s knees, to give you an idea of how high and hard they were thrown.

I lost it.

“You little brat! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” I broke a switch off of the nearest bush and started thwacking him. “You don’t throw rocks at a baby! What the hell is wrong with you?! Where’s your mother?! GET BACK HERE! DO NOT MAKE ME CHASE YOU!”

Okay, so, not really but I wanted to. Badly. Instead I said, “That’s it. Let’s go,” grabbed Ben and grumbled at Eric about, “Oh, driving to the good park is too faaaaaaaaar, going to a new park isn’t enough ex-er-ciiiiiiise.” Then let Ben play in the grass for a while, all the time contemplating going all “Hand That Rocks the Cradle” on his butt and shooting dirty looks back at an 8 year old child.

Seriously, I, a grown woman, was shooting evil, dirty looks at a child. Not my most shining moment but, hey, don’t nobody mess with my baby.

Yesterday was another day of training for the peer counseling job – which I am still ridiculously excited about – and the second time I took Ben along. It’s so wonderful that I’m allowed to bring the Benjaroo for trainings. It makes things a lot less stressful. Yesterday was the first day my co-peer counselor brought her adorable 9 month old baby girl with her, armed with a ton of really cool toys and a Pack’n'Play, too.

To be honest, I was a little nervous introducing them to play with one another. It’s been no real secret that Ben’s remained pretty unsocialized since birth, other than with children quite a bit older than him. The best friends he’s had so far have been 3 and 5 and, while he really enjoyed it, the extent of their playtime was him handing them giant legos so they could “build Ben a building.” He’d never really had direct contact playing with anyone that wasn’t a member of our family. I imagined him grabbing a hold of the little girl’s hair and trying to pull off her face while I ran in circles screaming, “BE GENTLE! BE GENTLE!”

So we put them both in the Pack’N'Play and commenced to attempting to trick our eyes into a feat most would be incapable of attaining. We kept one eye on the presentation (my co-PF managed to do this with the presentation behind her – Im-freakin’-pressive) and one on the babies. At first, Ben sat in the corner of the PNP, positively terrified. I had to fight with every ounce of my mommy protectiveness to not yank him out of there and tell him, “It’s okay, baby. Mama doesn’t like socializing either. You only ever have to hang out with me. Ever. I’ll even be your prom date.”

Instead, I let him stew and he got acclimated. He climbed out from the corner and he grabbed a book. After a short pull back and forth, they mutually turned the pages, pressed the buttons and nearly made me cry. The rest of the day they spent predominantly together in the PNP, or with her crawling off while he chased her. She got out to be changed? He started at her from the side of the PNP nearest to her, pointed and hollered, “AH! AH!” She reciprocated.

It was disgustingly cute and my immediate reaction was to tear up and get all sorts of fuzzy about my sweet baby growing up. I have a feeling I might be that mom who cries on the first day of school, cries during the first bike ride, first date and prom. The anticipated therapy bill has just grown expotentially.