My Son’s New Best Friend
Is it possible to witness the early social activities of our children without reliving our own?
I was part of an amazing group of mothers in LA. We found each other through a “mommy and me” class, the kind where you sit in a circle with the babies in the middle and compare notes on sleep and swaddling. I dropped out after eight weeks.
During and after each meeting, I’d find myself regressing to the psychology of high school, only instead of shoes and makeup, it was all about Bob strollers and Bumbo seats. The other women seemed to 1) all know what they were doing, and 2) have an abundance of free time and disposable income for gear. While there were a few moms in the group that I liked very much, it became too stressful to try to bridge what felt like overwhelming social awkwardness. I didn’t yet realize that everyone felt this way — we were new mothers, we were tired, we hadn’t shed our baby weight.
There was one mom in the group who lived near me, and we swapped numbers. I liked her. She had a sense of humor about motherhood and about all of us. This woman was very close with another of the mommies I’d liked. The three of us made a date. And then another. Soon, the six mommies who lived East of La Brea decided to get together for weekly playdates without the class or its hefty price tag.
These women kept me sane through the first two and half years of my son’s life. We met on Friday afternoons and drank Pinot Grigio in little cups with ice cubes while our kids learned to play together. We joked about being the splinter group from Mommy and Me. And through our two years of Friday afternoons, we became close. We saw each other through breastfeeding and weaning, preschool tours and first birthday parties, marital disputes, moves and pitch meetings.
“One day,” one of them warned, “We won’t get to choose who we hang out with. Our kids will go to school and choose their own friends.” What horror! Having to spend time with parents you may not like because your children like their children and now you’re stuck with each other.
In our group in LA, my son was the youngest. While the other kids played together, my son often played on his own or with me. He watched the others who were mostly walking and jumping before he was able to do either. (He takes after his parents; he talked first.) And they grabbed toys from him, which first elicited blank stares and then, a howl. It wasn’t that he didn’t like them — he did. But he held back from them, watched before trying to engage. Occasionally he’d bond with one of them at a time — usually one of the girls. But this group was about my need for friends, not his.
I worried that my son wasn’t good in groups. He preferred one-on-one interactions. “Like his dad,” said my husband.
I worried in vain. In his Brooklyn preschool, our son is the oldest of the group and something of a social butterfly. He loves the other kids and talks about them at home. And now, there is a friend, a little girl who told her mother (after the first week of school) that she loves my son. And the teachers have told me, “They’re besties.”
My son’s new best friend made up a name for them that sounds something like “Brangelina” or “TomKat.” Last week, they had their first play-date at my house. On the way to our apartment, the little girl said to her mother, “I want to dance with him to the music.” And so, when they arrived, I put on some Stevie Wonder and the kids danced and the grownups had tea. The toddlers jumped up and down on my new rug while eating cookies and bunny crackers. Then, my son took this little girl into his room. There, they opened his books and flipped through them together “reading” — that is, they looked at the pictures.
“I want to stay here,” said the little girl when the playdate was ending.
Here’s the shift: whereas in LA, we had playdates based on my need to hang out with other moms, now these are initiated by my son and guided by his own choice in friends, not mine. The mom who brought her little girl to my house last week is the first adult I’ve met through an autonomous friendship of my little boy’s. And, PS, I liked her! But the point isn’t that I like her, the point is that he does. I have my friends. He’s choosing his.
