My Son and Friends

Sometimes I feel guilty about my son's lack of friends. Okay, by sometimes I mean most of the time. I hate that I have no idea who he likes to hang out with. Luckily we have family. Josh loves his cousins. He and Olivia are best friends and he has asked me (through signing) multiple times if we can adopt Trevor to be his big brother. This is the only thing that staves off terrible guilt. Each year at the end of school I ask the teacher which kids he enjoys spending time with and I try to talk their mother into play dates. This has never once worked. Maybe I am doing it wrong.

I am always shocked at the number of kids that shout their hellos to Josh while we are out in the town. During parades, at the store, in the mall, on the street, all the time I hear, "Hi Josh! Hi!" repeated as Josh usually smiles and completely ignores the yelling child and keeps walking. I try to make him stop and say hi. This is always an odd situation because I know the kid isn't from his regular class (maybe from his integrated class) but I don't know the relationship. Does this kid play with my son? Do they say hi in the school halls? Do they only say hi when the other kids aren't around? I have no idea how he feels about them. Here are two situations on two ends of the spectrum. Sadly, because I don't see him with many kids other than family, I don't have much to go off of and these are a couple of the handful I have had.

We are coming to the Fourth of July celebration for our neighborhood. If you remember, this was a wonderful day for us overall, but as we arrived, a little girl in Josh's Primary class said, "Oh no! There's Josh. Let's hide from him." She ran and hid from him with a couple of other kids. The rest of the kids just ignored him completely. Of course, Josh just ignored them as well.

But compared with this:

We went swimming the last day of the summer. Josh and I were swimming in the lazy river (his favorite) when we heard a little voice calling his name. It was a boy maybe a year older than Josh. "Hi Josh! I saw you at the parade too!" Eye contact, smile, equality. He said goodbye and swam off but he either smiled or said hi when we ran into him. After noon I told Josh I needed a break and I would watch him go around the lazy river. Truly I didn't need a break but I felt the need to not be the helicopter mom that won't allow her son to swim without being 2 feet away. As he went around the river, the boy came up to him again. I couldn't hear what he was saying but they were both smiling. As they went around the corner, the boy reached out and grabbed Josh's life vest. My heart jumped not understanding what he was doing. The boy pulled Josh closer and put his arm around him so they wouldn't lose each other around the corner. I cried as I saw them laugh and talk together. This lasted about 5 minutes. I found his mother and thanked her for her son explaining a little of the situation. She seemed a little uncomfortable but whatever, I hope that she can later think of it and know how amazing that was for me and how proud she should be of her son.

Now I have to figure out how to get more of the second example and lessen the first. All I can say is thank goodness for family. Built in friends and the best company we could ask for. If only Mandie lived closer...