The bus arrives, he gets off the bus, and I see him looking at me across the street. His eyes telling me the beginning of a story, before even opening his mouth.
“Dad, this boy poked me in the eye at lunch on purpose, and then this other older boy was messing with me on the bus. I kept telling him to stop, and tried to not sit near him but he followed me, and then pushed my head into the window. These boys pick on a lot of us in the front.”
With tears in his eyes and a quivering lip he stood there on the sidewalk next to me, and waited until the bus passed. I responded by giving him a hug and saying, “buddy.”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I just asked him how he dealt with it and kept trying to encourage him and let him know it’s not his fault some boys choose to be mean, even when he is trying to be nice. In the middle of it all I gave him a little taste of a story I was reminded of in the recent movie American Sniper. As the story goes, I told him about three different types of people: Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs… Continue Reading…
