Making friends

The single most important thing has happened in my son, Harry’s, social development and I could weep with relief.

He made a friend. All by himself. And not just any friend but, after all the problems he’s had being frightened by them, an older boy.

I saw a boy from down the road sitting at the end of our drive so I sent Harry and Matthew off to weed the flowerbed, or in boy-speak, muck about in mud. After saying hello to the boy, Sam, Matthew suggested that Harry might like to show Sam his Action Men and Action Men vehicles (that I bought at a recent toy sale, thinking that he wouldn’t be interested in them but that lots of other boys are and it would be a good way to make friends) and now, just like that, he has his own friend.

Even though Sam was inundated with Harry’s life to date, ‘my Mummy has a baby in her tummy, I’m five, I used to go to ***** School (Sam was wearing the school shirt), my dog called Brin died,’ he wasn’t put off. Now it’s Sam this and Sam that, and Harry’s talking about going down the road to play with Sam and the other children (which until now he’s been too frightened to do even though some of them are his age and he knows them from when he was at school).

I spent the first few years of Harry and William’s lives going to endless toddler groups and mothers’ meetings to give them social opportunities and to make friends myself. Despite that they have struggled to go happily into school and one of the friendships I engineered ended up being one of the problematic ones for Harry when he started big school when the ‘friend’ started pushing him over in the playground. Since Ben was born I haven’t attended one toddler group with him and I don’t even really regret it.  And Harry’s new friendship proves that at some point all children will go out and make their own friends, regardless of anything their parents do or don’t do.

And I couldn’t be happier about it.