BFF

I'm going to share a warm fuzzy with you here today about this handsome young man to the left here. Normally I write about my family in my family blog. But, there's another part of this story that I must discuss here with all of you. I'll get to that in a moment.

Landon's best friend, Hatim, is from Africa. They moved here last year. I live in Idaho. We are a bunch of white rednecks. :0) OK, so we're not. But the only color we see around here is in flowers. You catching my drift? Landon and his little friend have so much fun playing together. Landon will go over and play at Hatim's house, and then we'll swap the next time and they'll come over here. His friend is such a well behaved, nice little boy. :0) {Glad my son is picking nice friends}

So, to get to the story here...Landon came home off of the bus on Friday with a sad face. Normally when this happens it is because some punk kid on the bus has called him a name. My son is sensitive. He can get his feelings hurt very easily. So, I braced myself for his story of who said what on the bus that day. {Is it wrong that I want to beat these mean kids up?} But, that day his story was different. He told me that a kid made his best friend cry. This mean kid told Hatim that there was no way he'd ever let him come over to his house. I think there was more said, but that's all that Landon would pass on to me. To make his friend cry, something pretty mean must have been said. And because his friend was being picked on, it made Landon sad too.

Now for my warm, fuzzy. My littly boy told that mean kid that he didn't care what he said. That there was nothing that would ever keep him from being friends with Hatim and he would never stop going to his house to play. {Remember these kids are 8}

When my Landon told me that he said this, and that he had stuck up for his friend to the "mean kid" on the bus....my heart was practically bursting with pride. So, when Hatim called on the phone not 5 minutes later inviting him over to play.....how could I say no? We had plans and places to go. But, I couldn't say no. Could I? When I picked up Landon from his friends house his mom thanked me for letting Landon come over on such short notice. She said that her son would have been heartbroken if I had said no, so she was glad we weren't busy. Whew! Glad I let him go. She had heard the story of the "mean kid" too from her son.

Now for the discussion part of this post....the reason I posted this family story on my random blog. Why are kids SO mean? Landon gets made fun of for being smart. They call him a momma's boy, they tell him he's stupid for being smart...{doesn't make sense does it?} I hate seeing his head hung low as he walks home from the bus. I know something happened on the bus. It breaks my heart. I try to tell him to ignore them, but it's hard. I ALWAYS tell him that as long as he knows he's not stupid or any of the mean things they say about him, then that's all that matters. Because those mean kids don't know him. They're just mean. But it still hurts his heart, which means it hurts mine. I remember being picked on in elementary. It affected my self esteem for years.

So...discuss! Honey Bunch posted about this type of thing today as well. I feel helpless at times. What can I do? What do you do?

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