Our neighbor Teddy stopped by to play this afternoon. I thought it went great. He was polite and didn't get into screaming matches with Molly at all. I happened to have just baked pumpkin bread so I was all June Cleaver offering the kids a fresh-from-the-oven snack. They played restaurant together, painted side by side. Molly was busy and happy while I cooked dinner. Perfect, right?
Turns out not.
After dinner, Molly tells us that Teddy (who's 5 now and in kindergarten) said he wouldn't be her friend anymore if she didn't trade tricycles with him. This sounds kinda lame when I type it but it really made my blood boil, I think because of how innocent Molly was about it. She clearly believed he meant it. I asked her what happened next. She said she traded tricycles, even though she didn't want to. She loves Teddy so much, even though they've always fought a lot. She never had a problem standing up to him in the days of grabbing toys and foot stomping and tantrums. This is new territory.
Apparently he used the line on her again when they were playing in the basement. He said he wouldn't be her friend anymore if she didn't knock down a tower. She didn't want to but she did it anyway. Grrrr!
After the initial shock of this wore off, Jim and I agreed that the answer basically is to convince Molly that Teddy is full of s**t and help her kindly tell him where to stick it if he threatens her again.
But the bigger issue here is how I'm really not liking the influence of the neighborhood kids on Molly lately.
Molly's been playing with a new crowd of kids (imitating everything they do, asking to go out every afternoon to see who drifts by, preferring to stand on the sidewalk watching them rather than ride her bike around the neighborhood with me). Sometimes they come over to our house. They seem so polite but then I get the vibe that they don't want me around. That's a big red flag for me now. Molly's still so sweet -- she'll come to me every five minutes or so to fill me in on what she's playing and to show me stuff. You can just see some of the older kids are not cool with this. Heck, even this afternoon Molly came up from the basement to say, "Teddy told me not to tell you something but I'm going to tell you anyway." I was almost too busy giving her kisses and high-fives about this to ask what the secret was. (They had gotten a Slinky stuck on the ride-on horse). Last week we had a little first grade girl over who was playing house with Molly on the deck and Molly came in to ask if it was OK if she peed next to her play kitchen under the deck, because that's what the little girl told her to do. I said no, it's not OK. She went right back out and told the girl that Mom said no. The girl was mortified and said, "Don't tell your mother!!!"
There have always been kids outside playing unsupervised in this neighborhood. Up until very recently I thought that was fantastic. It's that old fashioned kid-directed playing in the streets until the sun goes down, drifting from yard to yard, spontaneous hockey games, independent childhood stuff. Ever since I read Free-Range Kids I've been really proud of our neighborhood for that.
That was back in the days when Molly's neighborhood friends where the kids of moms I knew. Now kids are approaching Molly directly and in most cases I don't even know the parents. (And where the heck are they, anyway? Yes, I'll admit it, I'm that uptight mom.) Suddenly I'm not so hot on the idea of raising kids in a quaint little neighborhood. It makes me want to scoop up my little family and move far, far, far out to the country.
In the meantime we're saying no to a lot of little kids who come knocking on our door. I thought it was just the new crowd, but I don't like what happened this afternoon with Teddy, either. I think sometimes I forget that Molly's only 3. I thought that age differences were less of an issue as the kids get older but now I see why she's not the same socially as a 5-year-old. She may really like playing with older kids but that doesn't mean I have to let her.
Is it sad that I'm looking forward to snow and cold weather just so the neighborhood kids will stay in side and leave us alone?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Oh! Older kids. You can always tell which kids have older siblings, which ones are the oldest in their families, and which ones are only children (aka the spoiled ones).
Sometimes I think we are missing out by not having other kids in our neighborhood, and sometimes I know we are not missing out. :D
There is a huge difference between school age kids and preschoolers. In my opinion the main purpose of preschool is to learn how to play well with others, and how to be away from Mommy. :/
The "I won't be your friend if..." is the oldest trick in the book. I still remember a friend pulling this on me while playing Barbies. We are still friends today if that helps. :)
Post a Comment