In the Waiting Room

We had an appointment with a surgeon today to discuss whether N needs surgery on his hernia and sometimes-undescended testicle (which today was present, though high, leading to a decision to hold off on surgery for another few months and do a recheck at that point). The surgeon was about half an hour behind schedule, however, owing to an emergency appendectomy, so N wound up playing for a long time in the waiting room. He was doing really well, sharing one of those weird bead-roller-coaster thingies with a couple of other kids, when a little boy--who, I later learned from his very sweet mom, had just turned three--joined the group. The boy decided that he wanted to play with every single bead N touched, and it was frustrating N to no end. N and I talked a couple of times about how he had to share, but the truth is that no matter what N did, no matter how many times N let the boy have one bead and just moved on to another, the boy would grab for the bead in N's hand. His mom was trying very hard to redirect him, and even gave him a couple of time outs. But at one point, when N put his hand on a bead that the boy was just about to grab for, the boy just suddenly lashed out and whacked N in the face.

Appropriately, the boy was scolded and taken away from the toy for a long time and made to come over to apologize to N, and all was more or less well. Except that N doesn't recover quickly from such things, and so kept sobbing and being dramatic. I had him on my lap and was talking to him quietly and finally said, "You have to understand sweetie, he's still just a baby."

"Yeah, I know," N said, his voice full of tears. "But he's a mean baby."