A Positive Experience in the Neighborhood!

What started out as a VERY negative experience in our neighborhood the other day ended up becoming a positive experience...

The other day the neighborhood bully and brats flipped Cameron the bird (unfortunately a very common occurrence). So, Cameron gave it right back to them. Typical kid stuff, right? Not in our neighborhood...

I was in the house and Curtis came in telling me that we were having another problem with the neighbors (could have been any one of five different families)...

Apparently Curtis was standing outside in our driveway and the mom from the corner house came out and started yelling at him from across the street.

She then got in her truck, drove in front of our house, stopped and told Curtis (in front of Cameron) "You keep your fu**ing kid away from my kids", or something along those lines.

I wasn't out there when this happened, this is the point where Curtis came in and got me.

I walked down to the neighbor's house to talk with the father (the mother was still gone, she drove away after cursing at Curtis and Cameron) and find out what they were so upset about.

Apparently Cameron's bully had convinced the other kids that Curtis had "flipped them off" and that he told Cameron to "kick their a**es".

Those kids told their mother and father and I guess it was at this point that the mom had come out and started yelling at Curtis. The dad was major-league angry.

I went back to my husband and told him what the dad had told me so my husband went down to speak with them (the mom was back by now) and let them know that he did not do as the kids were claiming and that it was the bully kid who stirred things up.

Unfortunately they don't believe that the bully is truly the bully that he is, because the bully doesn't pick on their kids (currently Cameron is the only kid in the neighborhood that this bully picks on).

The reason for this is because A) they have older kids that will pulverize the bully if he picks on the younger siblings and B) their kids aren't inherent targets like Cameron is (their kids don't have the problems Cameron has so they aren't targeted).

But nevertheless, because the bully knows how to excite and upset Cameron, he manages to convince the neighborhood parents that Cameron is the bad kid. And that gets Cameron shunned and shut out.

Since Curtis went down to speak to the parents the mom has decided now that it's okay for Cameron to play with her kids, and it actually gets even better than that...

I haven't been back down there to speak with either of them but based on what Cameron was told when he went back to visit, the mom took the time to read a book we gave them "Can I tell you about Asperger's Syndrome?", explained to her kids what Cameron is dealing with and told them that they weren't to talk about Cameron and his issues with the other kids in the neighborhood!

I'm thinking about giving a copy to the family that left Cameron out of the birthday party, to see if it'll change their minds about Cameron. :)