Play My Way!

I'm sitting in my front room, reading online about some local news in our town. I should be taking a shower, but the news is compelling so I haven't gotten that far yet. Brandon and Caitlin are painting rocks on the back porch. They're pretty happy. Our neighbor kid, Big J, came over about half an hour ago to play, which is fine with me. But he seems genuinely perplexed that Brandon and Caitlin are happily playing together, and don't want to do what he wants to do. I keep hearing "Hey, guys, I didn't come over here to play by myself. I came over to play {can't understand what he's saying here}."

As a person who is generally aggravated by loud people, I'm ready to send him home. But as mom, I'm holding my tongue, hoping they'll work it out. I'm curious about the outcome.

Brandon has made a few suggestions of what he wants to do, but his friend wants nothing to do with them. Instead, he wants to play in basement, which is already a disastrous mess from last night. Brandon and I spent a little less than an hour this morning cleaning up his Legos so he could use his train table for trains again. It was quite an undertaking, and it's no surprise to me that Brandon and Caitlin want to play with trains. But Big J destroys train tracks, and has destroyed all of Brandon's Lego creations. So I'm also not surprised Brandon doesn't want to play a game that involves trains and bombs.

Oh, the outcome has already played out. Big J has decided that he doesn't want to make rock bugs, play trains without bombs, or play the computer game (which is usually a huge hit). He's decided that he's leaving. Brandon's now very sad. I think his ego's hurt, so I should be a good mom and go comfort him.