The Dilema

Well, I could sit here and blog about our move from Hawaii and the drive across country but most of you read Blunoz' blog so that would just be redundant. Suffice it to say, I never want to make an overseas move again! :-) I think I am getting too old for this moving around stuff.

So we are happily settling into our new home and loving being back in NoVa. We were all excited to hear that there was another 2nd grade boy on the street. ES eagerly awaited for him to come home from school on our first day in the house. I was quite impressed that ES wanted me to take him over to the boy's house to introduce himself. They did not end up playing that day, but did play later and all seemed well. When ES was enrolled in school we were exited to see that they were in the same class, a familiar face.

Well, ES no longer likes this boy, lets call him SP (I will explain later). When we are walking home and SP is walking home as well, ES runs ahead to avoid him. He even ignores SP's calls of "ES ES ES"!

Grammy is visiting and picked up ES at school yesterday and was able to get out of him that SP hit him in school during an assembly and has called him names such as "Scardy Pants" (thus we will call him SP... maybe he is the Scardy Pants". :-) I asked ES if he told SP to stop hitting him and he of course said no. Hello! Of course SP is not going to stop. I told ES next time tell SP to stop it or he is going to tell the teacher. ES was surprised that I said to only give SP one chance. I told him the number of chances was up to him but he needed to be sure to tell SP or anyone to stop doing something that he did not like. SP also apparently gets into trouble a lot at school. ES is quite the straight and narrow goody two shoes at school so I am sure he does not appreciate SP's shenanigans!

Well, now here is the problem. SP lives across the street? What is the correct thing to do here? Obviously I want to convince ES to be polite to SP but I also don't want SP to take advantage of ES and I don't want ES to be forced to play with someone he does not like, just because they live on the same street. How do you handle this relationship without creating a soap opera on the street?

Any advice?