This is how it was handled when I was in school. I was party to (and by that I mean directly involved in) more than one ‘meet me at the park’ fights.
My mother’s advice to ignore trouble did not work. My father’s advice to not start a fight but always finish one did work. It only took a couple of knock-down drag-out brawls to establish that I was Not To Be Fucked With. One such fight was kind of a double date. My sister against one girl, and me against another. When sister and I got home, we found out both other sets of parents had called ours. Both other sets of parents were told that ours knew about the fight beforehand, and that neither my sister nor I would be punished for it. That, as I recall, was the last fight.
Neither of us ever got into trouble so long as we could honestly say ‘Dad, I did not throw the first punch.’
I think so. The same thing happened when I was in 7th grade except this was a mother who encouraged her son to fight someone. Certainly my parents were rather disgusted by her behavior.
WTF was the OTHER mother doing there to get the episode on video? Filming her daughter beating up the first girl? Is this the new urban rite of passage? “Oh, honey! Stacy was in her first fist fight! Here, I’ll send you the video from my cell phone!”
Thinking more about it, all the adults involved in this need to be arrested. Want to go assault another kid? How about we break into a few houses on the way, maybe knock over a convenience store? The adults in a child’s life are supposed to teach them that breaking laws is bad, not drive them to it.
Only once did I see adults and parents get excited about watching kids fight. I was around 12 myself. A neighborhood bully had been beating the rest of us kids up on a regular basis. He was bigger than most of us, we were all afraid of him. another kid that lived a block away and was a “jock” kinda guy confronted him in the middle of the street telling him “He was tired of watching him pick on kids smaller than he was” and proceeded to kick his ass in full view of every window on the street.
Looking back, it is sad that none of the adults stopped it. (but the kid did need a lesson and his parents didn’t do anything about him picking on other kids…I know. My mother went to his house and spoke to his parents before the incident. The result? He beat me up the next day at school for ratting on him.) I certainly would have tried to break it up between those girls and I don’t have any kids.
*It may be only the eighth most outrageous moment in sports history but it is definitely the most humiliating. Imagine getting your butt whipped in a boxing match and then having your mom climb into the ring to defend you with her shoe.
In a 1989 fight for the British light-heavyweight championship Tony Wilson got knocked down in the third round by Steve McCarthy, but that wasn’t the decisive blow. Wilson’s mom Minna Wilson then sprang into the ring and started beating McCarthy with her high-heeled shoe, opening a gash on his forehead that required four stitches to close. When McCarthy refused to continue, the victory was awarded to Wilson — Tony, not Minna. *
See? It pays to take an interest in your kid’s life! :dubious: