Today I was walking with my son, who is almost 4 years old; we weren’t bothering anyone. My son started messing with the ice on the road. A boy about 7-10 years old was passing by with his parents. They walked past, but the boy suddenly turned around, approached my son, and pushed him (not very hard—my son stayed on his feet).

анонимный вопрос

I cannot guarantee that in a real-life situation I would react the way I now conceptually consider to be correct; too much would depend on various insignificant factors. How repulsive the boy would be to me personally, how adequate his parents seemed to me, how much of a hurry they were in, and, most importantly, how shocking this episode was for my son.

The more vile the kid seems to me, the more unpleasant this episode was for my son, the less his parents are rushing, and the more sane they look, the greater the likelihood that I would develop the situation toward preventing such crap in the future. That is, I would draw their attention to this crap and ask them to hold the boy’s hand, since walking aggressive children on a leash is not common practice.

If, hypothetically, the interaction is likely to be very short, then I would probably limit myself to making a scary face and making some kind of sharp, threatening gesture toward the kid. Ideally, the kid should quickly bolt or recoil and fall on his backside. The goal is for the aggressor to be humiliated without the use of direct physical force, and then I can focus on figuring out how my son is doing.

If he is indignant and wants to fight back, then the conversation will be along the lines of “we really scared him!”. If he is more surprised and trying to understand what that was, then I’ll discuss with him what that was (imagine a dog barked at you on the street; you don’t need to kill the dog, it’s enough to chase it away). If he didn’t pay much attention, then let him continue with his business; it’s good when a person has a strong psyche.