Friends

One thing we have started experiencing with Lili now that she is in preschool, is the concept of friends. Not the friends that we parents push on our children because we like the other parents. I'm talking about the friends that kids make on their own. The ones they choose themselves...without any input from Mom or Dad. Since starting back at New Horizon, there are a handful of girls that Lili talks about all the time. Every day she will come home to tell me how so-and-so is her 'best friend' and how they had so much fun together. I love it! Of course the alternative to that is that some days she comes home to tell me so-and-so is NOT her best friend. The teachers are doing what they can to show the kids that they are ALL friends...but of course they now have learned the 'best friend' term and have a hard time letting that go. It can be used for good, or it can be used for evil...as we now know.

I was able to meet the moms of some of these munchkins at the Thanksgiving lunch New Horizon had for the parents and actually coordinated a couple of playdates. I considered these to be 'real' playdates because the girls were just dropped off at our house and the parents left. This is a whole new thing for me! Lili had a blast both times, but I have to say...3 year old playdates...are interesting........ 3 is by no means an easy age. The kids still struggle with sharing and their feelings and things can very quickly go bad. Other than a couple of minor struggles over toys, which we got through without any war wounds, things went fairly well. On her 2nd playdate though, we did experience a meltdown from Lili during the last half hour. She was very tired and had hit a wall. At that point there really wasn't anything anyone could do. I felt awful though because her friend wanted to keep playing, but Lili was done. If you tried to talk to her, she would cry or give attitude and she could not be convinced to continue playing. When her friend's Mom arrived a short while later, she cried even harder because she did not want her friend to go. It was a lose-lose situation. Let her friend stay and Lili would continue to be overtired and cranky. Let her friend go and Lili would be sad. So we let her friend go and within 5 minutes of the door closing, Lili had passed out on the couch. I know playdates will get easier as the kids get older, but I still felt so bad about how it all ended. Hopefully the next one will be better!