Reader Guilty Mommy writes,
Hello, I found an only child post on your site and really enjoyed it.. Can I ask for a bit of advice along the same lines? I’m an older mom (42) with a three year old and he is independent, smart, and social but a follower. My son is not yet “tainted,” he doesn’t know how to make fun of people, be mean on purpose, or ignore kids. His cousin of the same age is the last of four siblings and my son wants to follow everything he does and where he goes. What bothers me is that his cousin will ignore him, mock him if he cries or gets in trouble, and just is mean overall.
My son also follows one of his friends to a point where the other child will ask me if I could make my son stop asking him to play. This breaks my heart and makes me feel guilty about not giving him a sibling. My son goes to pre-pre- K and has been since he was 2.5. What am I doing wrong?
Dear GM,
Good news! There is absolutely nothing wrong with your son. He is developmentally normal and sounds pretty sweet. Bad news, though: your guilt over not giving him a sibling is making you interpret normal types of child interactions as “bad.” Good news again, though: I am going to help you change your way of thinking and thereby make you feel a lot better about the whole situation. And this is why you pay me the big bucks. (Just kidding this is a free advice site.)
Lots of kids are “followers” at this age and right up through age 5 15 25 forever. What you refer to as “following” is just the normal human (or really any animal) desire to be part of a group. This is prosocial, normative, and positive. Of course, there are some kids who just don’t want to play with your son. This is normal too! It’s the same as how there are many people in this world that you yourself don’t want to hang out with, not for any terrible reason but because you just don’t click with them, or you would like to be alone, or anything else.
The key challenge for you at this stage is teaching your son that it is totally normal that other kids don’t want to play sometimes. You need to convey that this rejection is not the end of the world, and that he needs to respect others’ boundaries and need for space. Teaching your son about this will make you feel like Super Mom, because respecting others’ boundaries is one of those Super Important Parenting Topics that don’t come along every day. Although it may not at first glance seem relevant with a three year old, this age is an ideal time to start teaching about consent. The little boy who understands that “I don’t want to play” is non-negotiable grows into the 21 year old man that understands how to respect his date’s preferences for sexual contact.
A hypothetical dialogue is worth a thousand words though, so here’s how this looks in real life.
Situation A: The Way It Used To Go (DON’T DO THIS ANYMORE*)
Son: Waaah! Mommy! John won’t play with me and told me to get away. Why doesn’t he like me?
You: My baby, I am so sorry (said with a sad expression). Come play with Mommy. (Shoot dirty look to John’s mother and tell your friends later that she’s really a crappy mom and maybe if she gave John more attention he wouldn’t be such a little jerk)
Situation B: The New Regime, Starting Today
Son: Waaah! Mommy! John won’t play with me and told me to get away. Why doesn’t he like me?
You: I don’t know why, sometimes people just don’t want to play. It’s important to leave him alone when he says no. He can choose whether or not to play. Maybe someone else over there wants to play, or you could dig for rocks yourself over here (said with casual, no-big-deal tone and smile).
If you find yourself consistently feeling guilty and sad about your son’s only child status, therapy could help you process these feelings and also think of ways to reframe the situation and proactively make it better. As an only child myself, I wish I would have had frequent, consistent playdates (meaning multiple times per week or even weekly) with other kids. This would go a long way to ameliorating loneliness.
On the very positive side, your son sounds like he is in the enviable position of being an only child with numerous local similar-aged cousins. This is awesome! Focus on the best aspects and traits of all of these cousins and allow for the natural ebb and flow of child friendships. Don’t pigeonhole this youngest cousin as “mean” unless there is a large body of evidence suggesting he is mean all the time to everyone. It is far more likely that your son and this cousin are engaging in a normal sibling type of bickering, which is an awesome social learning experience particularly for an only. Unlike the only children who are raised mostly playing with parents that always give them their way, your son’s little brain is expanding and growing from the knowledge that other people sometimes don’t want to do what you want when you want. This is a profoundly meaningful opportunity for him to learn how to empathize, how to mentalize, which means how to get into others’ heads and know what they are thinking, and how to respect others’ physical and emotional boundaries.
Good luck! The first few times of Situation B may be a bit hard, but I have full faith in your ability to reframe this situation and give your son the parenting he needs in this stage. Keep me posted, and till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, I Wish I Had Had Same Age Cousins! Lucky!
_____
*Exaggerated for humorous effect. E.g. I know you wouldn’t use the word “jerk.” You’d say “sociopath.” (Kidding again!)