My social butterfly

My darling daughter always amazes me. Not only is her beautiful face beyond comparison, her personality is golden. Yes, I tend to place my daughter on a sky-scraping pedestal. I see in her a person who will achieve great heights and realize her dreams with jaw-dropping tenacity. She has accepted her baby-sister with amazing grace, loved her immediately from the very beginning. She is eager to help me with diapering and feeding, and fetches washcloths and binkies without hesitation. My fears of her exhibiting signs of jealousy have been completely obliterated. Since the arrival of her baby-sister, my husband and I have demanded more of Sophia, asking her to play quietly, instructing her to settle down more often, and making her wait until after baby-sister is asleep or done feeding before we could attend to her requests. And although there have been moments of stubbornness and resistance, those times are negligible compared to the many times Sophia waited patiently with a smile, yielding to the baby’s more immediate needs. And yes I do feel guilty for asking so much out of her – but like a grown-up she seems to understand that she is no longer the only child in the house.

What amazes me most of all is her social intelligence. She can go into a room full of kids she has never met before and within minutes become everyone’s BFF. She is an absolute social butterfly. Her active imagination and penchant for laughter and silliness has made her popular among her friends. The parents of her little buddies call to see if their children could have play dates with Sophia. Her classmates at school jump up and down with excitement and can’t wait to hug her when she arrives. At the park, I am always in awe at how easily she makes friends with the other children. It doesn’t matter if the kids are older or much younger than her, she’ll approach them, say hi, then in the blink of an eye they are running around like old friends. The other day, a girl twice her age arrived at the park and Sophia said “Hi little girl, you want to play with me?” Such confidence. Such a free and easy spirit to assume that everyone wants to be her friend, and she’s never been refused.

Which is why it took her by complete surprise when one little girl said no. Sophia was playing in this spinning rocket contraption at the park and she was having a great time all by herself until this cute 3-year-old girl came along to see what Sophia was doing. Sophia graciously stopped spinning, acknowledged that the girl was smaller than her and politely asked “Would you like to play with me? You can get on and I will spin you.” The little girl screamed “NO!” It was a growl of negativity, a very loud and very mean rejection. The little girl’s mother came and reprimanded her of course, but it was too late. Sophia was shocked, but most of all hurt. No one has ever refused to play with her before, and she didn’t know how to take it. The tears welled up in her eyes and she ran to me. “I want to go home mommy,” she kept saying through her tears. I felt so bad for her, but it was a good time as any to learn a lesson. I tried to explain that it’s okay, that some kids just want to play something else or want to play by themselves, that some kids are just not as ready as she is to become friends and need more time, that some kids are too young or too small to do the things she could do, that some kids are just plain spoiled and the parents should be spanked (that last one I kept to myself). It took some time, but she finally calmed down. And that cute little 3-year-old, blue-eyed blond and all, eventually came to Sophia to apologize and asked if they could play. And like best friends they played until the mosquitoes swarmed and ran us all out of there. But not before the little girl’s mother came to me and asked if they could play together again sometime. My social butterfly persevered once more.