What Would You Do?: Playgroup Edition

At a large playgroup your three year old comes and tells you that another child is hitting her. Do you tell her:

A) "Maybe he just wants to play with you. Go back and see if he wants to join you and your friends."
B) "You don't have to spend time with people who are being mean. Find someone else to play with."
C) "If he hits you again, hit him back."
D) Screw this--just go hit the kid yourself. He's already smacked your one year old in the face with a car and hits or pushes her every time he walks by.

Okay, so options C and D aren't really options. And much as it would be nice, the mom of said child was not doing anything. I didn't know her well, so I tried not to judge. Maybe she's really tired. Maybe she fights this fight with her kid all the time.

When my friend's daughter said that the kid was hitting her, she told her option A. Anyone who knows me will know right away that I told my daughter option B.

What would you do? I see the wisdom of option A. But maybe my own life experience has taught me, the hard way, to not spend time with people who aren't being kind and uplifting. A lesson I'm still learning as an adult. But I also don't want my daughter to learn that she should never play with someone who did hit her once--they are just kids after all and she does her share of pushing when cornered in a playgroup disagreement. The kid in question this time was hurting other kids as he walked by them for no apparent reason, so I definitely didn't see a need for her to interact with him. But I will remember option A in a potential future scenario where a child who is usually nice is having a bad day.

What would you do?

What Would You Do?: Building Self-Esteem

Here's the scenario:

Playgroup. Three girls are your daughter's age (3 years old) and have been friends since they were old enough to play with other kids. You have noticed that your daughter is often left out of this group and she plays by herself or with a younger girl who is left out because of her age. Then one day at playgroup you look up just in time to see one girl point at your daughter and say, "We're not going to play with her!" And the other two follow suit.

What do you do? (Besides cry in the car on the way home even though your daughter doesn't.)

She has told me that some of the other girls aren't nice to her. I've asked her if she still wants to go to playgroup and she says yes. I've told her to play with the kids who are nice to her. But it breaks my heart. I know I can't stop other kids from being mean to her or excluding her, but what do I do to help her face these situations which come all too early?

I saw a quote recently that said something about filling up your child's bucket of self-esteem so full that no matter how many holes the world pokes in it, it will never be empty. But how do you do that?