Social Interactions

My husband coordinated, almost completely on his own, the end of season pool party for our neighborhood.   He was busy from ten-thirty this morning until  six o’clock tonight with the event.   I helped when and where I could but I mostly made sure the children were being fed and taken care of at the pool for the long hours we were there.

I watched them interact with their peers and noticed some significant changes in them over the past year.    My daughter is highly social and can get along with anyone.   What she lacks is the ability to tell what’s going on around her and sometimes that makes it hard for her.   She is a master at pretending she knows something she doesn’t.

For instance, she heard Jay and Claire seeing who could swim across the pool faster.   It was Jay’s turn when I asked her if she wanted to go to the bathroom with me.   “Not yet, I’m watching Jay swim across the pool.”   I said sure, I’d wait and then I watched her.    She said a few seconds later not in a particularly quiet voice, “where is Jay?”   She was really listening, not watching Jay swim, but people who don’t know don’t realize.

She had a very nice time with her friend, Zara, who was in her class last year.   They played for hours until Zara had to leave.   It was nice because my daughter didn’t need a lot of adult supervision and interaction for that period of time.

My son was almost unrecognizable from eight months ago.   He had a lot of trouble doing collaborative play, meaning working equally with his peers.   He wanted to either boss them around or do protective play, something he picked up from trying to take care of his sister after she lost her sight.

Recently I’ve heard from multiple parents how their child really likes playing with my son.   This is news I haven’t heard before.   They preferred to play with my son and even looked up to him.   This therapy with Dhruti was really working; my husband and I had been retrained and my son’s brain had been rewired to good effect.

Since my daughter’s vision loss I’ve spent far more time watching her in public settings mostly because I’ve had to.   Today I was able to watch my son intermingle with lots of children and effortlessly be friends with any of them without conflict.   They seemed to like playing with him and were interested in his ideas and advice as I heard them calling out to him from across the pool.

I sat back and watched him and was so glad to see the new maturity in him.   He wanted so badly to had friends that wanted to play with him in his own very domineering way not that long ago.   Now he’s playing with new friends and contributing as well as listening to how they want to play—and he’s having fun the whole time without a single raised voice or conflict.  

The Big Boy Update:  We went to H-Mart, a large Asian market that had lots of samples.   My son loved them all, insisting we get the duck and some squid and several other things.   At one point he said out loud, “when am I going to get a bad one?” talking about the samples as he moved from server to server.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We have to be careful with my daughter because she will easily gain a fair of things since she’s hurt all the time due to her inability to see things.   She is currently overly cautious of the water.   Last year you couldn’t keep her out of the water.   We’re going to have to work on this.

Marathon Training:  We ran fourteen miles today.   We were thinking about sixteen but didn’t have enough time.   Maybe next week we’ll run eighteen and I’ll feel better about where we are in our behind the gun training schedule we haven’t made up and aren’t really following.