I worried about how Lincoln would adjust socially to kindergarten. He is very sensitive and tends to get his feelings hurt easily. He is the type of kid that in the past has waited to be invited to play with a group rather than walk up and ask if he can join them.
We were walking home from the bus yesterday and as usual I asked him how his day went. He proceeded to tell me what they had for snack and about the boy on the bus that tries to kiss the girls.
Then I asked him what he did at recess and who he played with.
“I played with Laura”, he replied. (name changed)
I tried not to act surprised as he mentioned a very quiet and reserved girl in his class. When I volunteered in his class last week I noticed that she didn’t talk to or play with a single person during their twenty minute recess. She just paced back and forth across the playground with her head down. I mentioned to him that she seemed shy and probably needed someone to ask her to play.
“Oh! That is nice. What did you do?” I then asked.
“Well…I asked her if she wanted to play tag and she just walked away. Then I asked her if she wanted to play something else and she just walked away again. So then I asked her if she wanted to swing and she said, ‘okay’, so we swinged. She told me she can even pump all by herself like me.”
When I was five I am pretty sure that if I had asked someone to play and they had ignored me and walked away I wouldn’t have tried again…at least not right then.
I was proud of my boy for finding a common interest with this sweet shy little girl and making a new friend.
And best of all he didn’t even realize that what he had done was valiant. He was just being Lincoln.
Another lesson from a son to his mother who sometimes gets too busy or caught up in her own world and doesn’t notice the people around that might need to be asked to play.
Whims 