Here I Am Friends!

Oh my. Tonight was the Spring Picnic sponsored by the Professor's building (faculty & staff provide the food and the students come eat with us). It's always a fun time, and it's nice for the students to see that their professors are real people (with spouses and kids).

In fact the Professor has had one student in particular who LOVES Miss A. Every time we're on campus she makes a beeline for us and wants to hold her. A is big enough now to really indicate her preferences on the matter, so I pretty much let her "say" whether she wants to be held or not. And the student is quite nice & trustworthy - just a little baby crazy.

Anyway, so M is big enough now that she likes to talk about her "friends". She has friends from the nursery at church, friends from story time, friends from the class she's in at MOPS, friends from day care (she goes an afternoon here & there on occasion), pretty much all kids she sees are her friends. We haven't thought too much about this (except to think that it was cute), and we often ask her if she wants to go see her friends since it gets her excited about wherever it is we happen to be going.

The day care she goes to is an in-home place run by the wife of one of the Professor's colleagues. So M know their kids pretty well - particularly their youngest, who's a little boy about 2 years older than her. She is always excited to see him, and we refer to daycare as "Mark's house" since it is actually Mark's house. So she was excited about seeing Mark at the picnic tonight, and all through dinner would periodically want to go find him and make sure he was still there. Actually it works both ways, since at one point during dinner Mark asked his parents if he could go sit by M, so that's nice.

After dinner the kids often run around and play outside (this is on campus), and this spring is the first picnic that M has really been big enough to play with the other kids. After some other running around she again decided she needed to find Mark. He was playing tag (I think) with his older sister (9-ish?) and another boy (6), and M started to follow them.

What struck me first was not that she lagged behind the group, which isn't surprising given her age, but the way she followed them. Rather than always heading for where they were, she followed in their footsteps. Kids rarely run in a straight line, particularly when they're chasing each other. M was faithful to their path, making all of the turns and twists they had made - even when the group of kids was now somewhere else entirely. She would also periodically just plop down on the ground for a few seconds, which made me laugh too.

Eventually the kids chased each other down the hill and back up a flight of stairs. I followed M around and caught up with her on the stairs, which upset her until she realized I wasn't there to take her away - just to watch. She's still pretty slow on steps, so she got farther behind as she navigated them. In fact before she made it to the top, the boys had chased each other around and back down the hill towards us. I tried to point out that her friends (and particularly Mark) were now just off to our right, but she insisted that the way to catch them was to keep climbing the stairs.

So we get to the top (finally), and now the little group is back down the hill and the game has changed. They're picking aging dandelions and blowing on them while making wishes. (This is pretty funny too since one boy wishes that Pokemon were real and gets really excited when he blows all the seeds off in one go.) M realizes that they're down there, so now she starts to head down the hill (scooting on her bottom - don't ask since I have no idea why).

A little ways down the hill she starts trying to get their attention. She starts calling out to them saying, "Friends! Friends! Here I am friends!"

They don't notice or acknowledge her, and my heart breaks.

She keeps going, scooting a little bit, then stopping and calling out to them again, "Friends! I'm coming friends!" She repeats this until she gets to the bottom, with no response from them.

Eventually once she finally reaches them, they welcome her into their game, and the older girl (who's about 9 remember) helps her pick dandelions and blow on them, and it's all fine. It wasn't that they didn't want her to join them, they just honestly hadn't noticed her.

M was completely unfazed and just happy to be with her friends, but I'm afraid I may never be the same. I feel like I got a glimpse of the not too distant future, when kids can be so cruel to each other. She's so innocent right now. Everyone is her friend, and she has no reason to think that someone wouldn't want to play with her or be her friend. So of course she wasn't upset - she just kept calling out to her friends to make sure they knew she was coming.

How I wish I could help her keep this perspective! I do not look forward to the day she realizes that kids can be mean. I want to protect her from all of that (junior high I'm looking at you), but I also know that that's simply not possible. As a kid I never thought that my parents might feel my emotional hurts too, but tonight I realized just how painful all of that must be for moms & dads as well as kids.

My reaction (I almost cried right there watching her scoot down the hill) also showed me that in some ways I'm still a little girl too. Looking for my friends, calling out "Here I am!" and hoping so much that they're glad to see me.