It was peaceful; the ball was bouncing back and forth, and the conversation was friendly. Then everything fell apart. The ball got launched halfway across the field as they turned on each other, screaming and yelling. What had begun as a simple game of four-square had decayed into a screaming mess again.
Over the summer I volunteered at Friendly House as an assistant counselor for their elementary school age summer camp. Part of my job was to assist with entertaining the kids and mediating disputes. I had expected the latter. I anticipated the mild spat between the kids over who would be able to ride the swing next, which would be solved by a simple talk. What I didn't expect were screaming matches over the simplest matters, like four-square.…show more content… Then came the fighting. Every 5 minutes of their game someone would start yelling over a who got out and where the ball landed. I was able to settle these relatively easily. I would first tell them that as the referee, my word goes, and when I didn’t see what happened, I told them to settle it with rock paper scissors. This worked up until a point.
At first it seemed like the typical dispute over who was out. It was the same two boys disagreeing, but this time, the other kids, fed up, joined in on the argument. They all, unfairly and without justification, started to gang up on one of the boys. They were yelling and screaming at him for always messing up; he retaliated by screaming and crying back at them. Given that this all happened in the span of two minutes, I was completely caught off guard. Once I realized what was happening I started to take