The Incident

 Dear Micah,

               My sister's son used to stay overnight from time to time to have a sleepover with my son.  On his last sleepover they both got into an argument and my husband intervened.  My husband is a get to the point kind of guy and just punished them instead of working it out.  Since that night my nephew doesn't want to spend the night anymore.  He and my son go to school together and play together at school so I know they worked it all out between them.  I think my nephew is afraid of my husband now and doesn't feel safe in our house.  What can I do to rectify this situation?

P.

Dear P.,

               I don't want to spend too much time attacking your husband, although I do plan to spend some time doing so.  Let's clarify your use of descriptives first...Your husband isn't a "get to the point kind of guy" if he went straight to punishing the boys instead of talking out the issue.  Getting to the point would actually mean that he sat them down and discovered what the argument was about and settled it by explaining each boy's viewpoint to the other and having them come to a meeting of the minds.  Just whipping them or yelling at them doesn't "get to the point".  Because of the way he handled the conflict between the boys, I believe that you are 100% correct in your conclusion that he is the reason for your nephew's newfound avoidance of your household.  However, I don't think your nephew is afraid of your husband.  I think he was so embarrassed by the episode that now your home is a symbol of that last bad memory.  I'm so glad you wrote about this because it's something that is important for adults to keep in mind when we are around other people's children.  As parents we are the guardians of our children's futures and that entails some amounts of discipline and lectures and embarrassing situations.  There's no way around that.  Parents are destined to leave a few emotional scars on their kids in order to raise them properly.  But when the child is not from your own household--the child is a niece or nephew, or grandchild, or neighbor--then we have to be very careful that we don't cast any emotional scars that mar their lives and memories.  Let me explain with an example from my own childhood and maybe you'll understand what I'm talking about.  When I was a child I spent most of my weekends with grandparents.   For me, my grandparents' house was a place of love and fun and freedom.  I enjoyed being around them and many of my best life memories derive from time with grandparents.  One of our favorite activities was card playing.  We used to spend hours playing a card game called Rook.  It was during one of these Rook games in which I received a childhood scar like the one your nephew got from your husband.  My grandfather was a wonderful man and he loved us all very much.  However, he also had an explosive temper which reared its head every now and then.  I had never personally witnessed one of his tirades although I had heard many tales of when he'd "act a fool".  Anyway, one night while playing this card game he exploded on me.  I don't really recall the specific details of what occurred to set him off.   It was something really innocent--like my grandmother and I were ribbing him because he was losing, or I had forgotten to lead off with one of my "trumps", or I was talking too much and wasn't paying attention to what had been played--I'm not really sure, I just know it was some kind of innocent kid mistake I'd made.  The point is that my grandfather flew into a rage, yelled at me, told me he was never going to play cards with me again, and then stormed off into the next room.  I was mortified.  I was just 9 or 10 and I wasn't sure what I had done wrong.  All I knew is that I had made him "hate me" and I was so embarrassed.  I just wanted to go home.  My grandmother was very sweet and tried to make things better, and in my grandfather's defense he felt ashamed of the way he acted and tried to make it up to me.  He even asked me to forgive him and wanted us to forget all about it.  I agreed, but I never forgot.  It took me weeks to feel good about going back to their house, even though it had been like a second home to me.  And to this day whenever I think about my grandfather, this memory comes to mind.  Don't get me wrong--it's not the first memory that comes to mind.  I don't define him by that one moment.  When I think of him I always think of him as the man who picked me up from school and took me for Icee's, the man who told me stories and took me fishing, the man who picked out the best pieces of fish or chicken at the dinner table to put on my plate (no matter how many other grandkids were around).  He was the man who taught me how to drive and he was the man who worried himself sick when I moved to Birmingham because he was afraid of the traffic--or perhaps it was my driving.  I have so many wonderful golden memories of this almost perfect man, but still I cannot shake the one and only negative one either.  So my point is that sometimes one single incident can leave a lifelong scar on a child that never goes away.  I believe that your nephew came away from your home with one of those scars.  For the rest of his life he will always go to that memory whenever he thinks about your husband.  That is never going to go away.  He won't be able to forget it.  So all you can do is try to get your husband to build some additional, more positive, memories to go along with it.  Maybe have him take the boys fishing, or to the movies, or to play paint ball.  Find some kind of activity that will simultaneously lure the nephew into giving your household another chance and help to lay some good times over that bad memory.  And let your husband know that he needs to work on how he handles highly emotional situations with children because his solutions may be causing more harm than the original conflict would have.  

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