Neighborhood Disputes and the Children Involved

Many times, and in our case, the beginning of a neighborhood dispute starts with some sort of an issue with children. Be it bullying, accidents, or simply childhood spats. Sometimes this spins way out of control depending on the parents involved. Many times parents can talk, figure out what happened, which kid said or did what and sort it out, and help each kid involved move forward. This is how a community can raise their children together, using these incidents as lessons.

There are always those parents whose children never do any wrong, and no matter what happens it's 100% the other kids fault. This is a tricky situation. These types of parents, and consequently their children, are impossible to talk to or work with in any capacity. Your kid needs punishment and their kid is the hapless victim of cruelty.

We, personally, have gone far out of our way to not talk about, or involve, our children in our dispute, they don't need it weighing on them, as, they are children and need to live as such. We know for a fact our adversary has been routinely telling her kids about everything, and going way beyond the truth to the point where the children are scared to death of us based on what their mom has told them.

The only time we have told our children anything is when it directly affected them in some way. Outside of that, we are very careful to only discuss things like that when the kids are outside, in bed or otherwise not around. Children are children, they should not have to concern themselves with serious issues regarding legal disputes, harassment and intimidation unless it will directly affect them.

Even in the case of the child needing to know, it should be handled very delicately, do not give the kids more details than they need, just give them directions and orders (such as to stay away from person "a") no need to get in to reasons unless they are old enough to process and understand such information.

It's very sad to see kids that are made into pawns in a dispute (such is very common in divorce situations) or are told they have been victimized by somebody or otherwise pulled in to anything of this magnitude. Make sure your kids are safe, but do not put information in their heads they can't adequately process or understand, it will only hurt them.