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I am blogging this a few days after the fact (despite the above date). I was tired, so I went to bed early, because I did not seem to be needed after a certain point. So I was not a participant in greeting T. and the sitter upon their return. I would later piece together what happened.
T. used to have private swim lessons. Since he no longer has a half day, it is no longer possible to find a time to schedule a private swim lesson. He is trying a group lesson with the same instructor at the same pool he used to have a swim lesson in, to see if that can work. This is his second lesson.
Because he is accustomed to private lessons, and he is quite context insensitive, he had the idea that he could use one of the two showerheads in the shower room for the boys / men for however long it took him to get through shampoo, conditioner, soap, etc. Despite the fact that now there is more than one class of kids going through that room every half hour. The other boys were relatively well behaved about his efforts to enforce a one person per shower head and wait outside the shower area rule — they shared the remaining head and did what boys do, which involves splashing, and then, their patience at an end, sprayed him as he finally left the shower room. They never said anything to him, no one touched him, no real indication of any kind of bullying.
But that story came out in pieces, and was initially presented as a safety risk (boys! playing on a wet surface!), and as rule breaking (of course one person per shower head and wait your turn! duh!). This is a problem of what makes sense in a scarce resource (time under the shower) and a lot of people who want to use the resource (more than half dozen per half hour). If you take more than 5 minutes in this situation, you are hogging the scarce resource. If you try to make other people also be leisurely and not share, this is not going to go well.
What to do? The sitter is framing it as a safety issue, as a bullying problem, encouraging T. to articulate feelings of discomfort or whatever (honestly, I do not think he had a real issue until they sprayed him as he was headed out of the shower, and it was a little cold). I talked it through with T. on a later day, and worked out in writing what had happened and delayed contacting the facility until I felt like I actually understood what was going on. Then I circled back to the sitter, who felt like the story had changed. Which it had! Because T. was originally outraged by rule breaking and engaging in enforcement behavior and got pushback and then of course my little angel could never do wrong and must be the victim and all kinds of interpretation got layered on top of that.
Adulting is hard and parenting is honestly tiring.
T. used to have private swim lessons. Since he no longer has a half day, it is no longer possible to find a time to schedule a private swim lesson. He is trying a group lesson with the same instructor at the same pool he used to have a swim lesson in, to see if that can work. This is his second lesson.
Because he is accustomed to private lessons, and he is quite context insensitive, he had the idea that he could use one of the two showerheads in the shower room for the boys / men for however long it took him to get through shampoo, conditioner, soap, etc. Despite the fact that now there is more than one class of kids going through that room every half hour. The other boys were relatively well behaved about his efforts to enforce a one person per shower head and wait outside the shower area rule — they shared the remaining head and did what boys do, which involves splashing, and then, their patience at an end, sprayed him as he finally left the shower room. They never said anything to him, no one touched him, no real indication of any kind of bullying.
But that story came out in pieces, and was initially presented as a safety risk (boys! playing on a wet surface!), and as rule breaking (of course one person per shower head and wait your turn! duh!). This is a problem of what makes sense in a scarce resource (time under the shower) and a lot of people who want to use the resource (more than half dozen per half hour). If you take more than 5 minutes in this situation, you are hogging the scarce resource. If you try to make other people also be leisurely and not share, this is not going to go well.
What to do? The sitter is framing it as a safety issue, as a bullying problem, encouraging T. to articulate feelings of discomfort or whatever (honestly, I do not think he had a real issue until they sprayed him as he was headed out of the shower, and it was a little cold). I talked it through with T. on a later day, and worked out in writing what had happened and delayed contacting the facility until I felt like I actually understood what was going on. Then I circled back to the sitter, who felt like the story had changed. Which it had! Because T. was originally outraged by rule breaking and engaging in enforcement behavior and got pushback and then of course my little angel could never do wrong and must be the victim and all kinds of interpretation got layered on top of that.
Adulting is hard and parenting is honestly tiring.