she met her match

Little Bully Lucy finally had her day in court. Arrrgghhh this is probably one of the more stressful parts of parenting. My child is communicating through hits, pinches, kicks and bites. Nothing I have tried has worked, I admit I've only tried a few things: ignoring, redirecting and time out. After a morning of bullying her FRIEND, Lucy met her match at a city park. I saw the look in her eye as a similar age girl came into her "territory". Lucy walked up to the toddler with her chest puffed out, and instead of cowering away the girl puffed her chest up and pushed Lucy. The girls momma came running. I said "i don't mind if you don't mind, this one [lucy] just might understand the other side". This momma said her child is the biggest bully, I said "I'm not so sure". We watched the girls work it out. It went well. I think Lucy understood the power behind the the other toddlers equally fearless positioning. Once the girls were on an understanding I was able to sit down with the other momma. She asked me if Lucy was from Ethiopia and I said yes and it turns out her daughter is from Russia. They are two months apart in age. Lucy came home at 5 months and equally powerful toddler came home at 15 months. It was another single mom. Apparently her toddler has bullied enough in her daycare to warrant the teachers asking mom to talk to the doctor about it ... well Lucy hasn't had that ... but she does go to daycare in "the hood" and I think some of her behavior is learned, let's just say she doesn't stand out in a crowd (behaviouly) in her daycare. The other mom and I laughed about it all for about 1.4 seconds before Lucy ran off south towards open water and equally powerful toddler ran off north toward oncoming traffic. We'll probably never cross paths again unless our kids end up in juvie together.