I watched Elliott’s face crumple. He thought he’d made a friend for life, or at least for an hour.
Sitting at Burger King watching Elliott in the play area I realized that my son is going to get his heart broken. Over and over again. Not in the romantic sense, while I’m sure that will come too. I’m talking in the sense that he thinks everyone is his best friend.
On that day he’d managed to get another child to play with him. The kid was a bit older, but not incredibly so and as they ran around my son shouted “best friend, come over here”. The other kid didn’t hesitate before saying “I’m not your best friend, stop calling me that, I’m not even your friend”. I watched Elliott’s face crumple. He thought he’d made a friend for life, or at least for an hour. He came back to the table under the guise of eating and told me he wanted to go home.
In the car he asked my why the kid had said that because they were best friends. I tried my hardest to explain what “best friend” means and how to some people it means more than to others. Elliott said “I don’t understand, I have lots of best friends”. My heart hurt. It was only words but it had taken a little bit of light from his eyes.
What you need to understand about Elliott is that at this point he was painfully shy. When meeting another child he was more likely to roar at them than to speak. Most often he’d end up playing in the periphery of other kids. That day he’d gone way outside his comfort zone and actually asked a child to play. The devastation he felt when it turned out they weren’t best friends was palpable.
Since that day we’ve made some great improvements. Elliott began to take dance classes. The confidence he has gained from walking into a room full of unknown kids and doing something he greatly enjoys is amazing. I don’t know if it is just the ability to learn something new or the fact that he had to walk into the classroom by himself (no parents allowed) and make his own way. Whatever it was, the change was immediate. At McDonald’s on the day of his first class he stood up for himself, he approached other children and he played with a confidence I’d not witnessed before.
He’s still going to get his heart broken. He still believes every kid that plays with him for more than 5 minutes is his friend, if not his best friend. Now, with the first crushing blow from one kid’s words and the confidence he’s gained from dancing, he’s more able to move on. However, more often than I would like I am holding my sensitive souled boy in my lap trying to explain that not everyone will want to be his best friend. Every time it happens a bit of my heart breaks as well.
