Skip to main content

Making new friends

Amanda and I have been playing "make new friends at the playground" with her dolls for a long time. The script goes something like this: One doll meets another, introduces herself, asks the others' name, then they find something to do like going to the beach, going to Mars, and so on. I've noticed Amanda trying the script out on new friends at the playground.

Luke has been paying careful attention, apparently. The other day at the park he walked up to the mom of one of the 18-month-olds at the park and announced, "Hi! I'm Luke!" They got into a nice exchange of names. I went over to make sure he was being polite, and he announced, "I'm just making friends!" (he's pretty loud with these announcements).

Then he was sliding down the double slide right next to another boy about his age. They got off the slide at the same time and Luke got right next to him and said loudly, "Hi! I'm Luke!" I was right there, so I suggested that he ask for the other boy's name. "Hi, I'm Luke! What's your name?" The other boy looked a bit stunned, and seemed quite a bit shyer than Luke, but as he walked away he said quietly, "My name is Tristan." "Hi Tristan! Good to meet you!" The two played next to each other for the next few minutes. The other boy's mom seemed a bit surprised and pleased that her son had responded, and they did seem to have a good time together. It's not very complicated, as social interactions go, but it's pretty good for a 3 year old, not to mention a child of mine...

Luke's other trick lately (and one reason I'm glad he's announcing that he's Luke) is that he pretends to be other people. For a while it was our babysitter: "Hi I'm Alex!" Then it became a friend of ours: "Hi! I'm actual actual actual Colin!" It's not a problem, until he goes up to strangers and introduces himself that way. Then it becomes confusing.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Things that are true

"Axial tilt is the reason for the season." (Picture a globe with the northern hemisphere tilted away from the sun...) I believe this is meant to be an anti-theist slogan, although I would point out that I believe there is a reason for the axial tilt. This is a runner up to my favorite true science picture, the "Gravity Forecast." I linked to this when I was a graduate student, but the site is long since down. Picture a weather forecast graphic, but instead of clouds and temperatures, the 5-day forecast predicts 9.8 m/s^2 down. Even the idea still makes me laugh, perhaps I will reproduce it someday. Luke cut his 4th tooth today (Finally!). So far they haven't caused us too much trouble. We'll see what happens when he gets his canines.
8 comments
Read more

Science at home

We had a fun "experiment" yesterday. We took a 2 liter bottle of diet Coke and some Mentos, put 4 Mentos at the same time into the bottle, and shot a huge jet of soda into the air about 8 feet high! It was quite exciting, although I think the warnings that you might want to use eye protection were a bit overblown. I suppose that it was an experiment only in the loosest sense of the term, but Michael forsees lots of fun in the future: using other types of soda, other methods for adding the mentos to the soda, and so on. It did get us out of the house for a while, and had Eleanor and Amanda dropping mentos into the used soda bottle and watching to see what happened---so cute!
2 comments
Read more

A day at the fair

Yesterday afternoon the whole family went to the NC state fair. We had a good enough time that I think we are going back next year, although perhaps we will leave Luke at home with a sitter. We went right after Eleanor's school. Michael picked up Eleanor, I drove Luke and Amanda. Through an amazing bit of timing, we met in the parking lot and walked to the fair together, about a 10 minute walk (not bad at all, really). I had meant to get to the fair much earlier and see the parts that Eleanor and Michael claimed not to be interested in (the animals and crafts, mostly) but I was running a little late. Our area has been in a serious drought for the past few months, so I am not complaining that it rained (hard) on us as we were getting to the gate. But it does seem a bit hard that we planned to go to the fair on the one day in the past 3 months that we had a rainstorm. Fortunately, the rain was scattered, and the clouds soon moved off to water another area. We took the opportun...
5 comments
Read more