Books/stories about children used as pawns?

Started by Houstorm, August 26, 2021, 06:19:00 AM

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Houstorm

Hello,
Do you have any recommendations of stories I could read to my children where the idea of one adult hurting or using a child as revenge against another adult is explored?  It can be a fable.  I'd like to to introduce the idea and discuss it with my kids in the abstract, without any personal examples, so that they have tools to deal with these situations as they arise.
Luckily, as I am NC with my FOO, this particular situation has arisen with another family at our school so it's less traumatic.  This family's children harassed my child on the school bus, then as a result lost the ability to ride the bus for a time.  The other family has refused to speak with me about the issue when it was nascent, so I had to report the harassment to the school (hence no riding bus).  Now, the mom is ignoring me, using her contacts to kick me out of another parent group (a parent support group text message).  Unfortunately, she is extending the passive aggressive behavior to my child who was harassed.  At a school event she refused to give my child a cookie that children could grab on their way out.  She made up a rule for withholding the cookie that wasn't applied to anyone else.  It is as petty as if she's in high school!
Anyway- I'm looking to give my kids tools for recognizing such passive revenge behaviors without re-traumatizing them by discussing the ways it happened to them.  Thank you!

Oscen

Hi Houstorm, sorry your family is going through this and good luck in your efforts to support your child.
I don't know any fables or fairy stories about this, sorry. But your child is so lucky you care about supporting them.
I really don't think you need to worry about retraumatizing your child in this case. They're school age so they're ready to understand that not all adults are fair and good, and knowing they can talk about things like this with you will stop it from developing into trauma.


Call Me Cordelia

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe comes to mind. The witch gets to Edmund first, and tries to use him to lure all the children to her. She poisons the well against Aslan, so Edmund is inclined to hate him whereas the other children intuitively love him. Aslan is the witch's real enemy. When she has an opportunity to kill Aslan in exchange for letting Edmund go, she takes it gleefully.

Houstorm