We got it wrong.

Remember that issue Marley had with the little boy at his school last week? It all came to a head last night/this morning.

Last night Marley told us he hid in the toilets at morning tea because he was afraid of the boy. So i emailed his teacher and the special education needs co coordinator just basically saying i cant have him this scared to go/be at school when normally hes been very content to go to school. I asked if there was anything that could be done.

The SENCO (special education needs co coordinator) emailed me back saying that actually they had found out what had happened. A group of boys had been running up to the little intellectually disabled boy at lunch and sort of scaring him/tagging him etc and then running away and hiding from the boy who thought it was a game and would chase them. She said a teacher had witnessed it and they seemed to think Marley had got swept up in it thinking that the boys were "playing" while they think that the other boys knew that they were teasing the little boy.

They held an assembly to explain whats ok and what isn't, when it comes to playing with this wee boy

I came down hard on Marley after i got that email, he cried, i told him not to be a bully and to leave the little boy alone and if the other boys are trying to 'get' him and run away that he needs to do something else and not do what they're doing. I made him repeat it over and over.

This morning at school his teacher who had read through the emails had talked to the little boys teacher who was the one who caught the boys doing this said that Marley was in the cloak room playing by himself when the other boys had run up to the little boy who had then chased them, they ran into the cloakroom and shut the door, being that the little boy is non verbal he uses small vocalizations and ran up to the door, banged on it and shouted.

That was the thing that scared Marley, he didn't know what was going on and suddenly hes scared of this boy, he wasn't even with the group of boys going up to the little boy.

I feel awful for coming down on him so hard when he wasn't even there, he didn't know what was happening and has since been scared of the little boy. Its eating me up today that i was so harsh when he did the right thing,my heart breaks for him when he wasn't doing anything, he got the fright, he told a teacher that the boy scared him and since then has been scared to go to school.

How could i be so wrong? I admit that telling him if the other boys are doing it to do something else and leave the little boy alone was still the right thing to reinforce but Marley is so confused now, he did the right thing- we praised him, i thought he was being a bully- i came down hard on him and he wasn't even involved.

I cant tell him not to play with his friends because part of his goal was to be more social. It worries me that he got caught up in this and hes the one who got the telling off from us, hes the one who is actually scared for a reason. The other boys don't seem fazed by it.

I feel like I've let Marley down. Andre feels the same, he also talked to Marley last night about this. He too was hard on him.

So all we can do now is continue to reinforce that he needs to not follow the other boys when they're misbehaving but we need to apologize to him and tell him he actually did the right thing. That we got it wrong. We need to let him know that we're here for him, that as people, as his mama and dadda that we make mistakes too.

We need to let him know that next time we'll make sure we get all the information before talking to him.

As parents, we let him down. But...

To err is human.

Theses are Marleys little creations that he made. The bike was a regular motorbike but her added a level so 2 people can sit on it. The car in the middle is just a regular car but the one on the right is a spaceship with a gun.