So, there is a flip side to the social butterfly coin.

We had a situation the other day. We were at the garden, and there was a little girl from the neighborhood who didn’t have a plot in the garden there. This little girl…hoo boy. Words escape me. She was the worst kid I have ever seen. She wouldn’t listen to anything. No matter how many times Sara said not to touch people’s gardens, or touch our things, or leave this or that alone, she just kept doing it. And the worst part was, she was convincing Evie to do it. She pulled out every trick in the book, telling Evie that her parents said it was okay to do things, telling us that Evie wanted her bike helmet, even though it was just a ploy to get the bike helmet we said she shouldn’t touch, etc. It was even worse than that, she had such sass on her. For example, she was trying to convince Evie to take off her shoes:

Sara: “Evie, don’t take off your shoes”
Girl, in her sassiest tone: “They’re not shoes, they’re boots.”

If we stopped watching them for even a second, the girl talked Evie into some compromising position; taking off her boots, practically strangling her trying to take off her helmet, getting her to take off her clothes so they could “shave” with sharp sticks. At one point I looked up and she had Evie by the hair and was getting ready to smash her face into the ground. She was, “washing [Evie’s] hair”. She never once called Evie by the right name, and even got into an argument with me about what Evie’s name was. Talk about oppositional defiant.

Did I mention this girl was 3 years old?

Poor, sweet Evie was completely unprepared for this. All of her interactions with other kids has been more or less adorable. Sometimes kids are bossy, but Evie’s okay with that. But we’ve never prepared her to resist being really taken advantage of or manipulated. It was actually quite startling.

It wasn’t all bad though. I was particularly proud to hear Evie say, “Remember what my mommy said…” a couple of times to the girl. It was like Evie was trying to do what was right, but she was totally overwhelmed by this other girl.

So here was the horrifying part. Evie wants to make friends so badly, that she was putting up with all of this. In fact, when the girl finally got called home (Thank god!) Evie said she was sad and she missed her. That really made my heart shrivel up inside.

Of course, when we did get back from the garden, Evie was not listening to us anymore, and being naughty. I was thunderstruck. We were around this girl for less than an hour, and, until her spell wore off, she had more influence with Evie than we had in years.

Thus the true horror of bad influences on your children was revealed to me. And to see Evie desperate for this girl’s attention, and to see how bad and corrupting this girl was, if only for a short time. It made me think of abused wives going back to their husbands. Now I am scared to send Evie to school, lest she fall in with a bad crowd! And furthermore, imagine being in that girl’s class in school. The teacher would not be able to give attention to anyone else, she would have to focus completely on dealing with her.

Really, the victim here is not Evie, it’s that poor little girl. If she acted like that with us, imagine what she is like at home. Imagine what her home is like in general. I feel really bad for her. However, at the end of the day, she’s not my responsibility, Evie is. And that’s why I am always going to be nervous whenever we go to the garden, that she might be waiting for us.

I kind of hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with things like this for a few years!