We All Make Mistakes

This morning was tough. Felix snitched on his big brother while we were having breakfast. After lots of encouraging, Dennis confessed that he had gotten in trouble at school yesterday. He slapped a girl on the butt. I took a deep breath and first thanked him for telling the truth but before I could explain why I was very disappointed in him he did what he always does---deflect by acting upset at me.  He becomes really rude, talks back, or walks away.  I don't know where he learned this response but it has been very difficult to deal with.  My husband, Jose, had already left for work so I tried to deal with it the best I could in the little time I had before school. I explained that for many years women have struggled a lot to get the respect they deserved and that it was disappointing to hear that my son was doing it as well. I told him we would talk more about it later.  The second talk went really well.  Jose again explained why what he did was not OK and that he too was disappointed.  He also added that he not only expects that he will never do it again but that he would be equally disappointed if in the future Dennis did not speak up if he ever heard or saw another man disrepecting a woman.  We also talked again a bit about respecting another person's body and about appropriate and inappropriate touching.

We decided not to give him any consequences for what he did at school because the principal had already taken care of that and he had already apologized to the girl. We did take away TV privledges for one day for his rudeness to me this morning.  We want him to understand that we all make mistakes but most of us accept that we messed up and try to fix it not make it worse by being mean to someone else. Maybe that is how his bio parents reacted to getting caught but that is not how we want him to react anymore and we need him to start accepting responsibility for that behavior as well. 

Many issues came up for me today.  It drives me crazy that I may never know exactly what my boys witnessed before they came to me.  I hate that I tend to go to the most awful places when certain, perhaps very normal, things happen. Slapping a girl on the behind is in no way OK but am I more worried about it than I should be? Would I be this concerned if I had him from birth? I guess I will never know.