M. at the park was at it again with Casper this afternoon, and I'd like some reality check and/or advice. M. is three and a half, was very precocious verbally and socially (I met her when she was 18 months old, and she said, "Hello, how are you?") She has a younger sister who will be 2 in December, thus 4 months younger than Casper. M. is demanding, attention-grabbing, was a very difficult two-year old for her mother to manage, though she's settled down some now. What they call "spirited," meaning, "we're nice yuppie types, so we won't say 'pain in the ass.'"
M. has figured out that she can do things that make Casper cry. And she does them on purpose. They're subtle things - growling like a lion at her, getting too close. M. probably tries these things with lots of kids, and the other kids either aren't bothered, or something. I've only seen Casper have a problem with her. M. and her sister are close, but her sister is very laid-back and yet still feisty enough to take no guff. I think the bad dynamic began because M. didn't understand that Casper was much younger than she is, since Casper is big for her age and is just enough older than the cluster of kids M.'s sister's age that M. probably doesn't class Casper as "baby sister." M. couldn't get Casper to play with her the way the 3 year olds play, and in trying, found she could make Casper uncomfortable, and now she enjoys it.
I'm not sure what to do. Casper is actively reluctant to stray from my side when M. is at the park now. I try to encourage her to play with the other children and not treat M. as different from the others. But M. will seek Casper out and bother her. I think Casper is too young to really be able to defend herself against this kind of social bullying - and I do see it as that. It's well done, and it's subtle - as subtle, for her age, as the cliquey righteous sniping we see done at b.org where everyone is oh so polite as they snarl. At b.org we're all adults and have the responsibility to respond ourselves, but Casper is my kid, and she just turned two, and I want to both protect her and equip her with the skills to either defend herself against this ill will, or treat it as the pettiness it is and ignore it, whichever she feels is appropriate. And yet, you know, TWO.
M.'s mother wasn't there today - M. was with a friend - but she is laissez-faire. As we were leaving, another woman asked me if everything was okay - having seen what was up. I am clearly not making this interaction up - M.'s mother and I have discussed it a little (without me letting on how much it upsets me) and other people see it also. I spoke to M. about it as she was doing it today - repeatedly asking her to give Casper space early on, and then when she got very aggressive right before we left, telling her that she needed to be kind to other people, and continuing to do something that she knew was making Casper unhappy was not nice. M. responded that she wasn't doing anything to Casper - she was talking to her sister (who was 100 yards away - M. had followed Casper and me as we went to a new area of the playground to play by ourselves.)
Can I do anything? How can I help Casper learn to cope with this? How can I help flea to learn to cope with this?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}