Playground Visit

Wednesday afternoon we trekked to our neighborhood playground, despite the high winds and loud noises from the pool being repaired nearby.
Despite John's generally cautious nature, he is now an expert at the playground equipment! On a previous visit with me, John had even climbed that rounded staircase/ladder you can see on the video; when I got home, I told Chris how surprised I was that John could climb it by himself and Chris replied that he doesn't let him do that because it's dangerous! (And I had thought it was dangerous too, but I didn't want to be the "lame" overprotective mother who didn't let him do what I thought Daddy lets him do.)



The playground is so convenient to our house. I took this photo to show the lay of the land. I'm standing at the playground and to return home, I'd walk across the grassy field, past the storage shed and tennis courts, then 36 paces through a strip of forest to our back gate. Also, you can see the outdoor volleyball court to the right where John likes to play "sand box." Beyond the picture to the right are the recreation club and pool.

Unfortunately, we've realized that this recreation area must have been a low-lying drainage area when the developer built here. There is a normally dry creek that runs through that strip of forest behind our house and the grassy field itself is essentially a marsh at this time of year. I think this standing water explains the number of mosquitoes who make our back yard almost uninhabitable in summer!

Lately I have been realizing that I don't know almost anything about the etiquette of being a parent around other children. For example, when we were at the playground yesterday, school let out and the parents congregated in the parking lot beyond the volleyball courts to retrieve their kids from the bus stop. Some kids raced over to play at the playground while their moms presumably waited for other buses. Two boys, around six or seven years old, came to play and it was quickly apparent that they were Mean Boys. They were incessantly mocking a same-aged little girl who was trying to play by herself nearby. (And was I supposed to defend her? She didn't have a parent there either. I didn't know what to do!) Meanwhile, John was fascinated with the boys (observing all their mean behavior!) and wanted to play with them. Then one of the boys did a climbing maneuver right over John's head and I perceived it to be dangerous to John, so I asked the boy to be more careful. The boy completely ignored me--and not in a shy way. (Note to self: Be sure to teach our children that they must respond to adults speaking to them.) I didn't want John to approach the boys to play with them because I knew the boys were mean, so we went to play in the volleyball court.

Then at the volleyball court there were two bigger boys, maybe 10 or 11 years old, digging in the sand with their tennis rackets (I'm sure their mothers would have loved that--ha ha!). John desperately wanted to play with them and kept walking ever closer, and then picked up some sand and threw it in their hole. I didn't know whether those boys were going to be mean, but I could tell from their demeanor that they did not want to play with a two-year-old. I was all twisted up inside about what I was supposed to do: I don't want to continually steer John away from approaching other children in a friendly manner. I want him to be better about approaching strangers than I was as a child. But I know that some percentage of the time, he will be rejected and my heart breaks at that! How does that saying go? Something about how a child is his mother's heart outside of her body . . . that's so true. Especially if I already know the kids are going to be mean, I don't want John to bother them. Yet how do I explain that? What do I do? I'm realizing fast that John is not far from discovering that there are kids who are mean. That makes me so sad. Thus far, John has mostly been exposed only to home schooled kids from large families who tend to be gentle and the older ones know how to play well with the littler ones. (Also, I realize that someday one of my kids might be the mean kid, so I don't say all of this from my high horse, as if I'll never be on the other side of things.)

Any tips from more experienced moms are welcome!