Question
I have four children in elementary school. They play with a neighborhood boy that is a few years older—so the neighbor boy is the oldest. I don’t get involved with their play, but I do intermittently supervise out my windows—it looks like normal childhood play.
On a couple of occasions now, one of my children will cry bloody murder. On those occasions, I have sent the neighbor boy home, and separate all my children to play quietly by themselves and then my children go to bed early. I say, “hey, if I have to get involved then the party’s over. You need to figure out how you all can get along.”
What I’m gathering is, all the kids are ganging up and being mean to one child. I think the kid being ganged up on changes; however, the child crying bloody murder is consistently the same child.
Am I getting too involved? Am I rescuing this child? Or am I not getting involved enough? Is the older neighbor boy pulling their strings? Do I need to keep the crying-bloody-murder kid inside?
