What to do, these situations always make me wreak my brain
having to be the one to decide how to deal with the situation at hand. A young
boy in his moment of anger chose in that moment to push another kid backwards
off of a four foot stage. Thank goodness the other boy wasn’t seriously
injured, worst case scenario; he could have broken his neck. This wasn’t the
first time I had run into this young man’s anger. Only I knew his situation at
home, how his aunt handles discipline. I didn’t just want to discipline this
kid by making it obvious that he didn’t something wrong and we weren’t happy
with it. There was more to this whole thing then that. But what would my team
think if I don’t suspend him? They all saw it; they’ll think that I am a weak
leader and that I can’t enforce the rules. I should just suspend him for the
last two days of camp, I mean what he did was bad! Somehow this decision just
didn’t sit well with me.
I decided he will come to camp and he will have to sit out
of all the activities with me.
He was very grateful not to be suspended and willingly sat
in the corner where I placed him away from all the other kids. I explained that
we were going to do something I little bit different and handed him the book “I
am special” by Max Lucado. Read this book, write any thoughts or questions you
have on this white board and I will be back soon.
For anyone not familiar with the book it is about a little
boy who lives in a village of wooden people who go around placing stars and
dots stickers on each other based on how they look and perform. The little boy
always had dots because he wasn’t good at anything. One day he meets a girl who
has no stickers because they don’t stick to her, he decided he need to know why
they didn’t stick on her. She brought him to Eli the maker of the wooden people
who explained to him that he is special because he was made by Eli and the more
he believed this the less he would believe the other people and the stickers
would stop sticking. As he leaves the house of Eli, one of his stickers falls
off.
When I returned to see how this young guy was getting along
there was one single question written on the white board, “Why did Punchinello
fail at everything he tried?”
As we discussed the book and his question it became clear
that he could relate his own live to this pretty clearly, so we did an
activity. We wrote out all the ways he felt people where placing dots on him
and then all the ways he felt people where placing stars on him. He focused for
an hour on this exercise writing in great detail his thoughts and feelings.
When we finished we went over them together and talked about the parallel of
the story, of how Eli represented God and Punchinello represents us.
I may never see this boy again. He was only staying with his
auntie for the summer, but I pray the things we discussed would be hidden in
his heart.
