Due to our heavy food issues, our geographic isolation, and my current ‘not 100% comfortable’ level of dealing with any food I don’t make myself, my kids and I are sort of shut-ins.
We don’t go out much, except to run errands. They don’t go to daycare, they don’t go to pre-school, they don’t get a chance to go play with other kids very much at all.
I worry about that.
I worry that by trying to keep them healthy and, frankly, alive, I am somehow depriving them of a necessary part of development: learning to interact with other children.
Keeping them alive and healthy is important enough that I don’t fret too much about that worry, but it is there, floating in the back of my thoughts.
Well.
Last week we were in a situation where Mr. Charm got to play with other children of varying ages.
Let me tell you a little about Mr. Charm: he is the biggest communist you’ll ever meet. He has no sense of ownership! Everything belongs to everyone. There is no “my toy, his toy” in his worldview. He shares EVERYTHING with EVERYONE. It’s really quite nice to see (though the Geek and I are politically about as far from communist/socialist as you can get!). We all want our children to be kind and play nicely, and Mr. Charm does that naturally.
He really is just about the sweetest, most charming little boy in the world.
So, back to our ‘other children’ playing experience.
The evening started out with Mr. Charm doing what he does: meet and greet, and try to interact. (He’s very gregarious.) Once the door was opened, he started playing.
This is where it got interesting. These other children, well, several of them were, um…how to say this…freaking BRATS! They would not share. They would not let Mr. Charm play with toys that weren’t even theirs! Even if they didn’t want to play with the toy, they didn’t want Mr. Charm playing with it.
This wasn’t personal to Mr. Charm – these children all did it to each other. They would go up and take a toy from another child. If a child did it to them, they would PUSH the child in return.
After only an hour of experiencing this, I noticed Mr. Charm taking toys from other kids. If we had stayed longer, I’m sure I would have seen him push another child, too.
Suddenly, I wasn’t as worried about my childrens’ lack of exposure to other children.
While Mr. Charm may not pick up verbal skills and other nifty cool things from his peers, he ALSO doesn’t pick up pushing, shoving, selfishness and general meanness, either.
It’s a trade I’m willing to make. Being a shut-in never looked so good.
