Little Run On and On

Today a little kid came up to me and said something like,

"We were talking about playing Star Wars and then he came over and knocked down our fort and we told him to stop and he picked it up and threw it through us and gave everything to until we anyway already started going over that part a little bit after he said we couldn't build with me and now it took a long time to take it but he doesn't even care."

And I blinked a few times and said, "....well, what do you want me to say?"

"We were here first and he said we weren't."

Then the other kid screams, "NO they weren't!"

I like watching kids face these really challenging problems of blame and justice and feeling wronged. Their testimony is usually unreliable and I think the best thing they can take away is a quiet confidence in themselves to persevere through their trials. As for my part as a robo-cop/judge judy of the playground/gymnasium, I just take in their data to build patterns of behavior and optimize my tiny-human directing approach.