Rugby Tackles Galore

This weekend, we went down to Bath for a 1 year old birthday party, for Claire’s friend’s daughter, Lara.

The whole day was great and Jack was being very well behaved for most of it, until the man with the bouncy-castle appeared…!  When they were first allowed onto it, all the children went into shy-mode, not wanting to be the first.  Except Jack.

Not bothered by things like shyness, Jack (with me shortly behind him) went bounding towards this inflatable land.  I didn’t know what he would make of it and so I climbed onto the bouncy castle too, just to help, of course.  We started to bounce around and then one tumble after another and suddenly, it was filled with children that arrived from nowhere.

To put things into a little context, Jack was certainly one of the smaller children there that day, and was easily knocked around by the bounces that the other kids were putting out. He spent most of the time on the floor, struggling to regain his footing, and this is where he decided that he needed a little help.

So, the most logical thing for a 19 month old child to do, is to hold something that might appear stable and secure. Namely, another child by the scruff of their neck! Needless to say that the other child, an older girl in the first instance, didn’t appreciate this and began crying by the time I made it over to them.

Jack didn’t see the problem in this, and although it did seem quite funny in a naughty sort of way, I knew the girl’s parents would be on-looking and so I had to do the ‘say sorry, Jack’ bit.  The girl looked at Jack as if to say that Justice had been done and that he really saw sorry for his actions, especially as Claire’s standing at the foot of the castle telling me to tell Jack to say ‘sorry’.

In reality, Jack is 19 months old and has no concept of ‘sorry’ or other people’s pain, as kids of that age don’t.  All the while that I am ‘telling him off’, he’s got a big cheesy grin plastered across his face, as throughout this little chat, he’s being bounced all over the place and is quite enjoying it.

Sadly, this wasn’t a one-off, and it soon evolved into Jack taking a dive into a little boy as a result of a bounce from another older boy, taking them both to the ground.  Once on the deck, Jack remained clinging to his new buddy, holding firm for whatever reason.  Again, I had to step in, but by this point, I had already retired to the sidelines because of the amount of kiddies throwing themselves around like loons on there. 

Again, I had to go through the motions of ‘telling Jack off’ for his actions, but he didn’t really get it, and wasn’t ‘sorry’.

I’d like to think that the other children got motion sickness, or simply bored, of the bouncy castle and retired one by one, but I think Jack’s assaults on them may have had an impact. But he was like a little hit-man, taking a different child down each time, so it wasn’t like he was bullying any one child in particular…