You Gotta Have Friends....

I have noticed some things about Orion in relation to playdates recently that seem like really important mental jumps for him.

The first happened last week when he was running around with some older kids playing "tag". He seemed to be having a good time, but then all of a sudden he was doing his stomping around thing with a mad face on. When I approached him to see what was going on, he ran off into the bathroom. I followed him to see if I could get him to come out, because the mom hosting has a toddler and prefers to keep that door closed. He started telling me how the other kids were going too fast and that he kept getting hurt. He said he wanted to be alone, so I decided to shut the door and give him a few minutes. He came out and was fine after that. It seemed really pivotal that he was aware of the source of his anger and what he needed to process it. In the past, he would usually start dumping bins of toys or even taking it out on other kids, so I thought this was a maturing moment for him.

Today, a couple interesting things happened. He has been really negative about not wanting to go places lately. In the morning, I was talking to him about how we were going to his friend Marek's house and how much he always loves it there. Then he said, "But then I don't want to leave, and that's why I don't want to go." Wow, that was a deep awareness! We decided to go anyways, and it went pretty well. The thing I noticed that seemed different was how he was really playing with Marek. Usually he prefers to play by himself, or maybe next to somebody. The closest he has come to this in the past would be something like taking turns with the same toy. But today I heard him actually talking about how they were going to build something. It was awesome!