Learning to Play

Here is the difference with my kids. Alex, while a bit on the agressive side with some boys, will play with anyone. He's not picky. Boy. Girl. Three. Four. Five. Six. He can turn any kid into this new best friend. I challenge you to bring on the kid he can't befriend. Anna, however, has a different style. We can't figure it out. She's not interested in making friends outside of the two she's had for a few years. She wants to be in the spotlight, but dammit if she will step on everyone to get there.

This week I decided to stop in at school and visit her teacher. Yep, when I pulled up I see Anna trying to climb over the fence of the playground and the teacher removing her not once, but twice and sternly saying something that I can only imagine was "please, stay off the fence."

Sure enough her teacher reported that Anna is learning to play with others. Hmmmmm...funny, since I heard this same report last year. Although she did follow it up with telling me Anna was pretty clever. Apparently she wanted the swing. The kid wouldn't get off so Anna parked a stroller in front of the swing so the kid couldn't actually....swing. She admited it was one of the more clever ways she'd seen to get someone off the swing, but did recommend that she use "words" instead of conniving ways to get people to do what she wanted. (No, she didn't say this exactly, but I got the point.)

Preschool politics are so fun!