slap boxing

I think I may handled something right! Well, maybe? Yeah. I have no idea if it will come back to bite me in the derriere, but it seems to have worked out ok so far... here's hoping for long term results.

I think I’ve told most of you that every day that passes at my job, I realize more that I never have any idea what I’m doing. Not a damn clue. Like, one time I pulled a yelling kid into my office who described to me in vivid detail, when I asked why he wanted to fight so badly, that he wanted to watch the blood run down the other boy’s face. Just in case you didn’t catch that: he wanted to fight because he likes watching other boys (particularly those smaller than him) bleed. WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THAT?
So every day I say and do things, all the while thinking to myself “welp… hope this works.” Like when I send kids home I have a talk with them about how I’m not sending them home, they are choosing to go home with their actions and I make them explain to me what they did and why they have to go home and how they can behave the next day not to be sent home. Do I know if it works? Haven’t the foggiest. Blowing smoke out my ass is an appropriate phrase to use here. And by appropriate, I mean apt or fitting, not proper.

Now the weather is warming up and people want to be outside more, and the new thing here in my community (apparently) with the kids/teens is something called slap boxing. Imagine a bunch of kids and teenagers standing outside watching two kids circling each other with their fists raised and swinging at each other. The idea (I think) is you swing your fist and if the person doesn't dodge in time you change your fist to an open palm and slap them to prove that you were quick.

On the one hand, it's kind of funny and an alternative to fighting. It’s active and outdoors and social and allows multiple ages to interact together. On the other hand, and this is a big hand, here are my problems with it:

1) It looks like fighting. This is a problem for a bunch of reasons. First, they like to do it on our property since we have open spaces that can accommodate all the onlookers. That makes it look like we are letting them fight on our property. We're working really hard to reinforce the idea that this is a safe space. We have a lot of issues with violence in our community and we want there to be a place, here in the center, that can be thought of as a safe place. A space that you can come and leave behind the violence and danger and feel calm and safe and protected physically and emotionally and mentally. Safe. Ideally this would spread. Fist fighting, or the appearance of it, just doesn't really reinforce this idea.
The second big problem is, especially if the ones slap boxing are high school boys, if a cop drives by when they are doing it and sees, there is a real danger that they will be taken in. At first I thought it was an overreaction when people kept saying this consistently when we have to deal with the fighting junior high boys (even in the cases where weapons weren't involved). I mean, boys fight right?
But even people like the social worker at my job, who is one of the most ration and least likely people to to exaggerate or use scare tactics that I know, would mention it both in meetings with the parents, "What if a cop had driven by?" or "If he keeps fighting he will end up in jail in the next year or two" (he's twelve) at which point everyone- the parents, the kid, my coworker who grew up in this area nods as if this is a true and accepted fact- and in debriefing, "I hope he doesn't keep fighting near big roads where he can be seen." "At least there wasn't a weapon involved" and "It's important to deal with this behavior before he ends up in jail. It's much more diffifult to change after that point."
Then I realised they were right. My cultural framework was based on the idea of if two suburban boys get into it and a cop drives by, most likely the fight will be broken up, a warning given and the parents called. In poor urban areas going to jail is a real possibility in these circumstances.

2) It can dissolve into real fighting. They are already in the fighting mindset. They are surrounded by friends. And I would imagine that getting slapped is a really embarrassing thing that could get you riled up, especially considering I have to stop kids from wailing on each other constantly because of something that they think another kid might have been going to say bad or about them. I swear I’m not exaggerating here. This happens almost daily.

3) It promotes violence. There’s already a culture of violence as a pastime in our community. This week we had a second grader come in and tell us how she “dropped” a kindergartener because she was annoying her. We talked about how else she could have handled it, and if that was an appropriate way to react (tripping a child 3 years younger than you and punching her in the face for tapping your head). She said her mother told her it was ok to do things like that, otherwise people would have thought her family was the kind that let people annoy them or put their hands on them.

Anyway, so here’s what I did:

I went out there and said hi, asked how they were. Then I explained that I needed them to move into the backyards of the houses instead of on our property and out of the view of the street (but I directed them to where I could still see them from the window). I said I knew that they weren’t really fighting, which is why I wasn’t going to break it up, but explained that it looks like fighting and since we’re trying to make the community center a safe space, we don’t want people to think we’re promoting or allowing fighting to happen. I told them to if they could keep it clean and fun it was ok, but if it became mean or real fighting we would have problems. Just as evidence of how these kids are used to being dealt with though, one of the girls asked if it turned into fist fighting I was going to evict them all from their houses. I stared at her in shocked silence for a few seconds until I could stammer out “Uh… no. I’ll call your parents and we’ll have talk together and deal with the situation.” I then walked up to the oldest kid, a guy probably 2 years older and a good foot taller than anyone else there and asked him if I could trust him to watch them and make sure it didn’t dissolve into real fighting. I explained that if it did he wouldn’t be in trouble I just wanted him to come grab me so we could calm everyone down and make sure it didn’t get bad.
He said “Yeah, they’ll be fine.”
“But you’ll come get me if that changes”
“I promise.”
“Cool. Have fun.”


I walked away totally unsure of if I had done the right thing, because of the mixed feelings about slap boxing and the generally never knowing what I’m doing. But here’s what happened yesterday that makes me think it may have been the right thing. The older kid (the one I put in charge) came in to say hi to me. None of the kids were slap boxing and instead asked if I would throw the football with them. The girls who were slap boxing waved at me across the street, and a parent mentioned something about how our community center is “supposed to be a safe place.” In the spirit of full disclosure and fairness the last one is probably related more to the fact that I'm constantly telling that to her son and not to this incident, however I'm greatly pleased to have this spread as a reputation. Nonetheless: Win?

tl;dr: what sounds like a crippling insecurity is actually a form of freedom that I am learning to love.