Give and Take

Sophia was having a hard time falling asleep.  She had popped out of bed four times already, so when I heard her sobbing, I thought it was another ploy.  I was reluctant to go in.

But then my maternal instinct kicked in.  It tugged at my aorta, and whispered, “What if it isn’t?” 

Alright, alright.  I’ll check.  But, I told my maternal instinct, “there better be a good reason she’s carrying on.”

I stood next to the ladder to her loft, one hand on my hip, my eyebrows raised expectantly. 

“I don’t want to go to school tomorrow,” Sophia choked out, between sobs.   This was something she had never said before. 

“But why, Soph?  You love school.” 

“The girls don’t want to play with me!” 

“Sophie, you have lots of friends at school. “  I named a few to drive the point home.  “I find it very hard to believe that none of them will play with you.”

“They don’t!  They left me all alone on the playground!”  She continued to sob.  I know that, even at this age, children can be cruel.  She has shared, on occasion, an unkind word that was hurled her way.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she has cast a few stones herself.

“Okay, okay.  Shhhhh.” I tried to calm her.  “Would you like for me to talk to your teacher?  Would that make it better?” 

Sophie shook her head yes.  Well, maybe there is a problem.  Best to let her know I’m on it.  That I hear what she’s saying, and I take it seriously. 

“Okay, I’ll talk to her tomorrow.  Feel better?”

She nodded again.  I tucked her in, and she fell asleep.

The next morning, I revisited the issue at breakfast.  I wanted to make sure she stood by her story, and see if there was anything I was missing.

“So, Soph, can you tell me a little more about what happened on the playground?” 

She got very serious.  “Sure mom.  You see, I wanted to play ice cream store.  And none of the other kids wanted to play ice cream store.  They all wanted to play tag.  But I didn’t want to play tag.”

Oh.  I see.  It wasn’t that they didn’t want to play with her.  They just didn’t want to play what she was playing.  Or, perhaps, dictating. 

Just a week ago, I had taken Sophia and her friend Reid out to an indoor playground.  Reid and Sophia have known each other since birth and adore each other.  But Reid now has a sister that Sophie tends to gravitate towards when all the kids come together, so he was very much looking forward to sometime alone with his old pal. 

The playground was empty.  “Bet you can’t catch me,“ Sophie taunted and was off, running laps around the playground on tip toe in stocking feet.  At first, Reid chased her with glee, but on about the 10^th lap, he started to slow down.  Sophie ran back to him. 

“I know, Reid!  How about we’re both babies!  Let’s crawl around!”  Reid smiled weakly and crawled around with Sophia.

“I know, Reid!  Let’s pretend this blue part of the rug is the water and we have to jump from rock to rock or we’ll fall in!”  Reid dutifully jumped after Sophia.

“I know Reid!  Let’s pretend we’re catching fish for our dinner!”  Reid, looking defeated started to follow Sophie.

“Hey Reid!”  I called to him. 

“What?” he replied, trotting up to me.

“You look like you’re tired of always doing what Sophie wants to do.”  He nodded, eyes cast downward. 

“You know, Reid, you don’t have to do what she wants to do all the time.  You can suggest your own ideas.  What would you like to do?” 

“I want to be a Power Ranger!”  Hmmm.  Hard sell, I thought.  I called Sophie over,

“Sophie.  Reid wants a turn to come up with an idea for pretend.”

“Let’s be Power Rangers!” Reid suggested, hopeful. 

“I don’t want to be a Power Ranger,” Sophie replied.  She looked thoughtful for a moment, “but I could be Wonder Woman.” 

“Okay!” Reid brightened at the prospect of their unlikely superhero duoship. 

“I have a bow and arrow, like Brave!” she announced, “and I’m going to shoot an arrow at you!”  She did, and they proceeded to engage in hand-to-hand combat. 

At least everyone was happy.

I considered Sophie’s behavior.  It wasn’t bossiness, per se, but rather an abundance of enthusiasm.  She was so wrapped up in her own ideas, she hadn’t considered that Reid might want to do something other than what she wanted to do.  Or her friends on the playground for that matter.  It was time for an object lesson.

“So what did you do?”  I asked her after she swallowed a spoonful of oatmeal. 

“None of them wanted to play with me, so I played with myself.”

“By myself,” I corrected.  It was an important distinction. 

“By myself,” she repeated.

“Honey, it sounds like it wasn’t that they didn’t want to play with you—just that they wanted to play something different.  I know you have a lot of ideas about what to do, but, if you want to play with the other kids, sometimes you have to do what they want to do.  It’s called give and take.” 

Sophie looked wary.  I still wanted to talk to Sophie’s teacher, but with a different aim in mind.

Though there is a rule that you really aren’t supposed to corner the teacher as she’s getting ready for her day, Sophie’s teacher graciously let me corner her.

“Ms. P, do you have a sec?  There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

She nodded and we convened by the reading nook. 

I told her about Sophie crying and not wanting to go to school the night before.  Ms. P looked surprised.  Then, I shared Sophie’s interpretation—that her friends don’t want to play with her—and my own analysis of the situation. 

Ms. P smiled knowingly.  It was just as I had suspected.  “Sophie is a very strong little girl.  We love that about her, and we wouldn’t want to change it.  But, like some of her peers, sometimes she wants things a particular way and we have to help her be a bit more…flexible.”  I love that Ms. P gets Sophie.  That, rather than think in pejorative terms—bossy, stubborn, strong-willed—she understands the pros and cons of the personality trait in question.

“I’m on the playground in the morning, and Ms. F has the playground in the afternoon.  Would you like for us to keep an eye on things and help Sophie work it out with her friends?”

Yes.  That is exactly what I wanted.  I nodded and thanked her. 

I walked over to Sophie.  “I talked to Ms. P.  She’s going to help you take turns figuring out what to play with your friends on the playground, okay?”

Sophie nodded, satisfied.  I kissed her goodbye and left for work, satisfied.

There were others that would help me teach Sophie the value of compromise.  I am not alone in this.  She will, hopefully, begin to understand the perspective of others—that sometimes her own desires and needs will conflict with theirs, but that concessions can be made to preserve the relationship.  She will learn that having her own way is not more important than having friends.    

Playground or Battleground?

I took Sophia to the playground up by my mother’s house. She lives in a town where: 1) many mothers do not have to and choose not to work; and, 2) many other families have two parents who work very high powered, high paying jobs and have full time nannies. So, that’s who the playground was packed with on this gorgeous, sunny day—mothers with their children, nannies with their charges. Many of the mothers (but not all) clustered in conversation or on cell phones, some of the nannies commiserating with each other or also on cell phones.

Wanting to give Sophie more independence, I sat off to the side, observing, while she tried to make a friend. She approached girl number one, who was filling a bucket with damp sand “Can I help you?” Sophie asked.

The girl whipped her long hair around, “No! I don’t need any help.” Sophie turned to me, looking stricken. I motioned for her to come over. “Now, that wasn’t very polite of her,” I said, “but she doesn’t want someone to help her right now. Look around for someone who seems friendly, someone who smiles or would like for you to help and go ask them to play.” Then I caught myself. “On second thought. Don’t ask. Just join in.”

I believe for years I was making a critical error in teaching kids with disabilities to make social overtures by asking peers to play. When a child asks, “Can I play with you?” she places the power in the other child’s hand, and what child passes on an opportunity to wield power? Asking establishes hierarchy. It says “I am in the one down position from you.” It gives the opportunity to reject. But, after observing children, a confident child will just join in or suggest ideas that excite the other children.

Sophie went up to a slightly older girl and added a shovel full of sand to the child’s castle. The girl said, “Hey! Don’t step in my moat!”

To which Sophie replied, “Okay.” And suddenly, they were playing together.

It wasn’t long before a boy about three years of age came careering over and jumped on their sand castle. The girl was mildly upset and yelled at the boy, who wandered off. Remaining just close enough to observe when the castle would be ready for another wrecking. The older girl and Sophie rebuilt and the boy came over again, and stopped on the castle. This time, the girl ran over to his mother, who was mid-conversation with a friend, she turned in the direction of the girl, and loomed over her. “He stomped on my castle! Two times!” The girl cried, exasperated.

Still standing, the mother angled her body towards her child. In the most bored of voices she said, “Henry, come here.” Henry dragged his feet over to where his mother was standing and looked away, towards the rest of the activity on the playground. His mother was looking over his head, staring at some spot in the distance in the opposite direction. Anyone who looked at them would not know that they were in conversation. She continued in her couldn’t-be-bothered tone, “Henry. It’s not nice to stomp on other people’s sand castles. Tell mommy you’ll never do it again.”

“I’ll never do it again,” Henry parroted.

“Now go play,” waved the mother, turning back to her friends and drawing her cell phone out of her pocket.

At this point, Sophie and I had begun to play together. We had built a castle of our own, for me, the queen. She stuck a flag in it, and was trying to find a suitable dragon to guard the castle when you-know-who showed up.

Stomp.

My reaction was automatic. It was the same reaction I would have given Sophie, had she done this twice before and promised me she wouldn’t do it again. It was the same reaction I would have given my students, back when I was a teacher.

With a tone, I said, “Excuse me!”

His mother snapped out of her cellular stupor and came over. “What did he do? Did he just kick her?” The way she asked indicated that this was a distinct possibility.

“No, no. Nothing like that. He just destroyed her sand castle.”

“Oh, well from the way that you YELLED at him, I thought he had hurt her.”

“No, he didn’t physically harm her.”

“Look. If you have a problem with my child, you come to me,” she barked. As if I was supposed to know who, in this sea of mothers, was his.

Then she leaned over to Henry and said, “What that woman did is WRONG. NO ONE has the right to yell at you.” And she continued on in this way, talking about how awful a human being I was, dragging him off.

Of course, she said nothing about his role in the interaction. His behavior. From what I could tell she just reinforced, 1) it is okay to damage other people’s property; 2) if I tell you not to do something, you don’t have to listen; 3) other adults have no authority over you; 4) I will defend your honor, even if you have done something naughty.

Interestingly, after his mother talked to him, Henry approached me. He looked at me in earnest and, though his speech was difficult to understand, I believe he was trying to make reparations. I was kneeled down to his level and in the process of listening to what he had to say, when his mother came marching over again, and yanked him away by the arm, “Do NOT talk to THAT woman.”

Well, fine. I knew better than to argue. Sophie and I moved to another section of the sandbox and continued to play together.

Still, I felt rattled by the experience and couldn’t help but replay it in my mind over and over again. Had it been Sophie, I would WANT someone to reprimand her. In fact, just moments earlier, Sophie was seated next to another child on a wide metal slide. She was banging on it with her feet, which she had once enjoyed doing with a friend before. But this boy was disturbed by it. He asked her not to. Then she smirked and did it again. At which point, I jumped in and said if she did it again, she was coming off the slide. And she stopped. It wasn’t that I thought banging on the slide was inherently a bad thing to do, but it was bothering this other kid, and knowing that, Sophie still did it. Not nice.

It is my opinion that at this age, kids don’t have the skills to work out their difficulty with each other. There will be plenty of time for “work it out on your own,” after they learn how to do just that. But having that expectation, without giving them the tools to be successful, just leads to conflict. Oh, there are some kids who intuitively know what to do and say, but from my observations of the playground, that seems to be the exception, not the rule.

It’s a fine line between hovering and educating for success, fostering a socially skilled child now, so I don’t have to deal with the repercussions of a rude, bullying or entitled child later. But I'd like to err on the side of caution.

The way I see it, the playground is preparation for life.