Weekly digest 75

Happenings We had to cut off a family whose son was nominally friends with my eldest, but actually has been pretty consistently mean to him, as well as being a bad influence on his behaviour thanks to “consequence-free” parenting. It came to a head on Sunday when our kid was pretty relentlessly bullied both physically and verbally by their kid, and the parents didn’t seem bothered (in fact, at one point the dad laughed at how upset ours was getting). A few empty threats to take him home, but overall no consequence. No apology was offered, and when we cancelled their future playdates, we were just told “he didn’t mean anything by it” when, well, obviously he did — the only bit he didn’t intend was any consequence coming of it. My eldest was shaken up by this through the week, and that knocked his confidence a bit at school (thankfully this other kid now goes to a different school). But he was brave enough to try Squirrels (the youngest branch of Scouting) this week, and he had a good…