We have it quite lucky, I know and appreciate that. I don’t live in a place where people are car-bombed daily, my daughter has her pick of food, and I can provide for my family. Any of this can change at any time, of course, but that’s not the gist of this little missive.
My daughter is a truly sweet little creature. She’s gentle and usually shy and reserved around other kids. Cat has two friends she spends time with who both have daughters that are roughly a year older than Julia. They’ve been playing together since birth. Now we’ve reached the stage where the other two girls are simply too far ahead of Julia. They talk better, they have more functioning logic centers in their brains, and they really just don’t like playing with Julia any more. If it’s just one of them at a time they might “slum” with Julia a bit because there’s no other choice, but if both of them are together they’ll go out of their way to get away from Julia. I witnessed this around Christmas when we all got together. The older girls — almost 4 years old as opposed to almost 3, by the way — would run into a different room and close the door so that Julia couldn’t follow.
As her parent it breaks my heart to see her shunned like this. Julia really doesn’t understand and, luckily, doesn’t really get offended. She just tries something different. I don’t say this because I blame the other girls necessarily either. Julia just can’t keep up and it isn’t much fun for them, I get that.
But I still ache for her even if she doesn’t.
Ron Says:February 13th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
I have seen this happen with my son at playgroup and daycare. He is 3 1/2 and is just beginning to realize what it happening. The only saving grace is his little brother, who absolutely idolizes him.