What happens when someone hits your kid. Here are their responses on how they would react personally and how they think their character would react.
Jud Harmon
That is as tough question to answer and to tell the truth I
don’t have an answer. Part of me feels good that I don’t have an answer. This
means that I have never dealt with that situation and it feels good knowing
that neither of my children have ever been attacked. On the other hand I feel like I should have
an answer. I would freak out, I would console them and make sure that they
bounce back from this and learn from it. I would track down the piece of
garbage who dared breach the serenity of my precious one’s childhood and lay
waste to them and everything they hold dear!!! These are all good answers but
they are none the less not my answer; I don’t have one. What I do know is that
I would react differently than my character. He is a big deal, he is a powerful
man who others rely on, and he has a career that demands more of him than his
family so he has chosen to make his career his priority. None of this is like
me and I have a hard time relating to a man that could not care less about his
child being involved in a situation like this. To be fair his child did the
striking and was not the victim so I can sit at a distance and imagine that
Alan would not be as calm or as distracted had it been his child who was
attacked. This helps me feel better about playing the part of a jerk, but to be
honest I am not sure. I can also tell you that I would not instigate a dialogue
with the parents of the boy who attacked my child. I am not certain of exactly
how I would act but I do know that I would not be calm enough to sit and drink
coffee and eat cake. That is one of the things that make this show so brilliant.
We take a situation that many parents are familiar with, and many parents are
not familiar with, and we drop our audience into the middle of it from the very
beginning and allow their preconceived notions to create a marvelous amount of
tension. This tension allows the audience to connect with our characters
quickly and strongly and I think it may even allow our audience to choose up
sides and even root for certain characters at certain times. Another brilliant
aspect of this show is that even those deep set allegiances will change as our
characters change and by time we are through there is no way of knowing who the
audience will decide is right and who is wrong. At any rate this is going to be
one hell of a ride and our audience is going to be glad that they chose to come
along.
Seve Isaacs
I have two kids - a four year old and a three year old -
both boys. They haven’t had a lot of opportunities to get in fights with anyone
besides themselves. Until recently I hadn’t really given much thought to how I
would react if someone’s kid were to hit one of mine. It definitely depends on
the damage done and how often it has been happening. If my kid doesn’t seem too
shaken up about it, doesn’t have any visible marks from getting hit and it was
just the one time, I imagine I am liable to let it slide. If my kid were to
have a broken bone or lost teeth (like Henry does in the play) or this was not
the first time this kid had hurt one of mine, I think I would be a lot more
upset about things.
I hate to admit it, but I think I would react in a very
similar way to Veronica in the play. She gets very defensive and wants to make
sure that the kid who hit hers faces the repercussions that are satisfying to
her. I think I would have a similar
mindset.
My character, Michael, Veronica’s husband, has a bit of a
different mindset about the whole thing. He more or less feels that Alan and
Annette have the right to handle the situation with their kid, Benjamin,
however they see fit as Benjamin’s parents. This is not terribly difficult for
me to play because it is something I frequently encounter as a teacher.
One difficult thing for me when I first started teaching was
how often I completely disagreed with the way some of my students’ parents chose
to handle certain situations with their children. I had to really make an
effort to remember that these adults were the parents here and it was their
prerogative to raise their children the way they saw fit. As long as there was
no abuse or neglect associated with it, then I had to just accept it, no matter
how much I disagreed with it.
Thankfully these are things I have only had to speculate on
as my kids are still quite young and we haven’t had the opportunity to find
ourselves in this situation. It is something I suppose I ought to think about,
though, since my oldest will be starting school in a year. It’s liable to
happen eventually.
Amy West Chambers
When someone hits my child, my first instinct is to
transform into full blown "mamma bear" mode and hunt that child down. Then I take a step back and try to get to the
bottom of the situation, 'why did it happen?' 'did my child do anything to
prompt the attack?'. I have to be
honest, my children can be little monsters at time and I am not naive enough to
think that they never no anything wrong.
I try to remain level headed.
Annette I feel at this point in my analyzing, may assume
that her child somehow brought on the attack.
She seems to not want to get too involved in her child's daily
life. She may even resent her child for
forcing her to deal with a problem, which pushes her out of her comfort
zone. Annette does not handle
confrontation well, she avoids it at all costs and when she cannot avoid it
becomes physically ill.
Annette and I are very similar in that way, I hate conflict,
and will not stand up for myself.
However, when it comes to my children, I am more than willing to fight
for what is right.
Tamara Harmon
From a personal standpoint I have to say fortunately for me
I have only ever had to contemplate this question. Neither of my children have
been hit by another person so I can only theorize on what I think I would
do. I know myself well enough to say
with confidence that my first reaction would be full blown “mama-bear” mode.
What I would do with that likely depends on the exact circumstances. If it
happened in front of me I know I would verbally strike out at the person,
regardless of their age or gender. I do not consider myself to be a physically
strong person and I’m not comfortable or confident in physically fighting so I
can’t say I would physically touch the other person, I would run my mouth about
it instead. If it happened somewhere else and I learn about it after the fact I
think my reaction would match the severity of the situation. If it was
something small and relatively harmless I would leave it alone with counselling
my child on how to avoid that in the future. If it was something more serious I
don’t think I would contact the other child’s parents unless I knew them. I
would probably work through authorities. I do not really like confrontation.
I’m not very good at it because I get very emotional.
From my character, Veronica’s, standpoint I actually believe
I know exactly what she would do. I believe it was Veronica’s idea to contact
Benjamin’s parents and invite them over for a conversation. I think she does
this for a couple of reasons. First, she cannot get the whole story out of her
son Henry. She knows she doesn’t have all the details and she wants to get
them. Secondly, Veronica considers herself to be above the emotional reaction
to things. She wants to believe that civilization can and should behave in a
civil manner. She also knows through her research and writing that when people
don’t behave, terrible things happen. These types of things make her
uncomfortable. She would eradicate these things if she could. By inviting the
Raleigh’s over she is attempting to prove to herself that she can take
something like her son’s teeth being smashed out and still behave in a
civilized manner. The reality, however, is that, at many turns, Veronica
resorts to incendiary remarks because she is actually quite angry that this
happened to her son. She wants satisfaction, and she wants Benjamin to be
punished. She also wants assurance that Benjamin will not do something like
this again because in her mind he is a public menace that needs to be dealt
with.
