Unconventional Parenting and Bullying

The other day I picked my girls up from school. As our routine normally goes, I ask about their days and they fill me in on the exciting happenings of the first and fourth grades. It starts out with the normal stuff, who they played with that day, the projects they are working on in class, but on this day Celena veers off topic to tell me that a little girl kicked her that day, on purpose. Now if you know my Cel, you know that she is probably one of the sweetest human beings you will ever meet. She is kind and loving, friendly and just plain awesome. But she is not the type to be pushed around. So I ask her to explain the whole situation, trying to decipher whether or not this could have been misconstrued as an aggressive act towards her when in reality it was accidental. I listen as she tells me detail by detail how it all went down and I come to realize this was no accident. This girl was trying to bully my baby. This is the first experience I have had with this kind of situation. As you can probably imagine, the mama bear in me kicked in automatically and all I wanted to do was find this kid myself. Cel was not too upset by it all, she was more annoyed than anything. I asked her what she did, how did she react to this girl? And she tells me she asked her to stop and when she didn't, Celena walked away from the situation. It was probably the right thing to do and I commended her for her choice.

Now this is where I found myself faced with a dilemma. While I think she did make the right choice in walking away in that situation, I am not raising my children to avoid conflict. I want them to be able to stand their ground when they are wronged. At the same time I don't want to condone fighting. I've never been a person who likes violence, but I have also never been one to let someone push me around either. So the rest of our conversation went something like this.....

While Mama is very proud of you for walking away this time, I want you to know that if someone is hurting you, causing harm to your body, and you have asked them to stop and they aren't, you need to do what you need to do.You need to defend yourself. Period. If that involves fighting back, so be it. You will not get in trouble with me for defending yourselves. I'm not saying fighting is always the answer, but I will not punish you for fighting back.

Now both girls are in the backseat giggling. They can't believe that I am saying this to them. I can't believe that I am saying this to them. But in certain circumstances, it is acceptable. I made it clear what I expected from them and they listened closely and understood. This may or may not be ideal parenting on my part. I may be leading my children astray according to some parents, and that's fine, everyone parents differently. But I am confident in how I handled the situation. I trust that I have instilled the proper values in my girls for them to make the right decisions based on each individual situation they are faced with. This may be unconventional parenting, but then again I have never been the conventional Mom....