You see, yesterday Christian was in the 3rd grade spelling bee. This was shocking to me because I think we spent Christian's entire 1st grade year trying to get a decent grade on a spelling test. Spelling was stressful to him and he hated it. I hated it too! So two years later you can imagine my surprise when he's a finalist in the spelling bee.
The top 30 kids in the third grade (10 classes) were chosen. Monday was the spelling bee. My hope and prayer was that he wouldn't embarrass himself by misspelling an easy word. I just really didn't want him to be the first one out.
He did well and made it to round three and then misspelled the word "complain." The student before him had the word "inning," too bad he didn't get that word, he definitely would have spelled it right!
Christian sat down and kids gave him high-fives and told him "good job."
I left feeling very proud of him.
But yesterday afternoon a kid walked up to Christian and said, "Hey Christian. I saw you in the spelling bee. You did terrible."
AHHHH.... what?? Oh no he didn't.
So I asked Christian how he responded and he told this kid, "Thanks for the compliment" and he walked off.
Here's comes the part when I cried...
Christian told me that he thought about pointing out the fact that this bully didn't even make it to the final competition. He thought about reminding him that he wouldn't have been able to spell any of those words correctly. He thought about telling on him... but he didn't.
Christian said, "That kid is a loser at everything he does. He was just trying to make himself look good and feel better. He probably knows that was a stupid thing to say. I don't care at all what he thinks of me because I know I tried hard."
Christian actually thought it was kind-of funny.
Several hours later, I still didn't think it was funny and I told Christian that I was probably going to talk to this kid's parents (we see them all the time at baseball). Christian just about had a heart attack and said, "Why would you do that when I already handled it?" In other words...back off mom!
I am soooooo proud of him. He handled it. Getting "justice" wasn't important. Proving to this kid that he was wrong, didn't matter to Christian.
2 comments:
What a great response from Christian!!! It's funny how sometimes kids respond so much better than adults do!
You must be very proud of Christian's mature response. You and Ryan are giving him the tools he needs to handle the mean and rude kids that he will encounter in life.
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