Dealing with rejection.

I have been posting a lot of "ranting" and "venting" posts, and if anybody is interested, here is another one. I'm not going to whine, but I do have a question: do you, moms and dads, teach your kids to include other kids in their game?

Now, its understandable, that not everybody can be instant friends, but I think everybody deserves a chance. We already discussed the question of "including others" in our Facebook group, but I want to bring it up again. I was re-introduced to this issue today, when we stopped at a busy park on the way back from a fun Dino-riffic playdate.

This is a great park, with a jungle gym, swings, all sorts of climbing areas, and a big sand pit, with a pretend dinosaur fossil, a couple built-in excavators. Santino walked into the park, stood for a few moments, saw two boys of approximately his age playing with trucks, and went to play with them. He sat down near those boys, looking straight at them, and was "welcomed" with a scream "Go away! This is ours!" So he got up and left.

Thanks to his easy attitude, Santino didn't get upset, but I did. These types of things really bother me, and I feel that I have to learn from him on how take these "unfair" sides of life easier.

Within the next 30 minutes, he tried approaching those kids a few times more, and was rejected every time. It seemed, that in the end he did get frustrated, as I saw him kicking a pile of sand in their direction. Which was understandable. I immediately intervened, reminding him "no kicking" and he went to play with a built-in excavator.

I can't remember whether he was rejected like that before. I don't think he ever was; and definitely not 3 times in a row. He dealt with this rejection rather easy, he just left and found something else to do. I do worry though, that he might pick up this nasty habit, so I tried having a talk with him later. I told him that what those boys were doing was not nice, and he should never tell anybody "go away", at least not from the get go when the other kid did nothing wrong.

It is kinda foreseeable, that these angry possessive kids will most probably grow up bullies (if nobody steps in to teach them otherwise, that is). While I'm thankful to them, that they taught my kid a life lesson, that not everybody is nice, and you have to be careful and aware with who you are dealing with, I still don't appreciate somebody telling my son "go away". I didn't interfere, as I wanted to see what he was going to do, and how he was going to take this blatant rudeness. I think it was those boys' mom who should have stepped in and told them "you need to share" instead of just watching them.

I also would like to reach out to all moms, who watch their kids rejecting somebody: teach your kids to share, include and be nice to others. When it becomes a habit, there will be less anger in the world, less envy and more fun! 

Do you teach your child to share and be inclusive? What do you think, should I have interfered and forced those boys to share? (I didn't want him to play with them anyways, I didn't think he would learn anything good from them.)