In Which Sophia Teaches Me to Get a Backbone

Yesterday was another in the string of lovely days we've been having lately, sunny and not too hot. The girls and I decided a trip to the nearly park was in order.

Honestly, I've been avoiding parks in favor of the beach. The problem is two-fold:

First, poor, sensitive little Evelyn is deeply distressed by every insect, every spider web, and every bit of unidentified debris that crosses her path. And there are a lot of all of those things at the park. (Why she has this reaction at the park but not at the beach, I couldn't tell you.) In addition to her fear of just about everything natural, Evelyn is terrified of most of the playground equipment. The little baby slide and toddler swings are acceptable in small quantities, but everything else is far too scary for her to consider. Instead, she wants to spend her time at the park grasping and clinging and refusing to have any fun at all.

And second, Sophia, who is at least part monkey, has no fear of anything whatsoever. Not even, say, scaling three stories of slippery ladders with no safety-net system in order to conquer the tallest, fastest, longest slide in the park. What's that? Mommy's off dealing with sad Evelyn and her fear of harmless fluff? No problem. Sophia can handle this enormous, dangerous, death-trap ladder all on her own while Mommy is distracted.

Now, I know I can be a bit of a worrywart. I do my best to insulate the girls from dangerous situations -- with good reason, given their condition. I don't think I'm overreacting when finding Sophia halfway up the tallest tower scares the spit out of me.

So you can see why we don't go to the park very often. Evelyn has no fun, and Sophia has far too much fun.

But yesterday's trip presented a whole new hazard, one I haven't encountered before: obnoxious, ill-mannered, poorly supervised little boys. These brats, upon arriving at the park with their tuned-out mothers, first decided it would be fun to shoot pretend guns at the twins. "Blam blam blam! Let's shoot these girls!"

I stood dumbfounded. What horrible, nasty little brats! I thought. What will their mothers do to curb this behavior? Nothing, of course. Mom #1 and Mom #2 sat on their bench not ten feet away and never even glanced in our direction.

I stared at the gun-slinging boys in shock and confusion while Evelyn's lower lip began to quiver. We were both of us stunned, and a little upset, and totally unable to form a response.

But not Sophia. She saw what was going on from halfway up Big Scary Tower. (Dammit! She's up there again!) At once, she reversed her course and started yelling at the brats, "You stop it! You stop that game!"

And, amazingly, the boys ran off, probably to annoy someone else for a while.

Holy cow! How did Sophia learn to stand up for others like that? Certainly not from me, her invertebrate mother who stood there slack-jawed.

I was still processing this when the nasty boys struck again. While Sophia climbed all over everything she could scale, Evelyn decided it would be fun to push an empty swing for a while. Unfortunately, the nasty boys also thought that would be fun, and they stood beside Evelyn, thrashing their swings around and calling Evelyn a baby. (Mind you, these kids were maybe four. Just old enough to think themselves worlds older and more sophisticated than a mere three-year-old baby.) Once again, Evelyn's face began to crumble, and this time I immediately intervened. (I knew by then that the absentee moms weren't going to.) I tried to calmly and quietly tell the boys that it wasn't very nice to call Evelyn a baby, and pointed out that they wouldn't like it if someone called them babies. What did I get in response? "We're big boys! She's a baby! She's a bad baby!"

Again, shock paralyzed me for a moment as I tried to work out what on earth to do. And again, Sophia came to the rescue. She swooped in from across the playground yelling, "That isn't nice! That isn't nice!" And I believe she blew a raspberry or two. And once again, the boys fled before her wrath.

It was time to leave the playground, despite earnest, tearful protestations from the girls. (Apparently, Evelyn wasn't finished being scared of the ladybugs, and Sophia wasn't finished scaring me or those wretched boys.) Lunchtime called, and I needed some time to process the morning's events.

I'm thrilled that Sophia isn't afraid to stand up for herself and others. I don't know where she learned that skill, but I'm glad she has it. I'm a little saddened to see that Evelyn hasn't yet developed the same skill, but it comforts me to know that she'll have Sophia looking out for her.

But what was my role in this scenario? A) Just how much do I get to scold these kids who aren't mine, whose parents are sitting right there doing nothing? And B) How do I want the girls to see me handle this situation? What do I want them to learn from me about handling conflict?

So far, I don't have any answers. What do you all think?