A year back we decided to move houses because the society that we lived in didn’t have many children. Shlok, my 5 year old, made just one friend. But a very very tight one. Even then on most days he ended up spending time pretty much on his own, surrounded by his toys and his imaginary world with them as very active purposeful members in it. Having moved and with a mission to increase his circle of friends, my husband and I made incessant effort to introduce him to new kids ( some not so open to including him) and get his social life going.
Amongst all the passionate ( bordering on hysterical) motivational ‘speeches’ to my son on how he would have the time of his life with his ‘enlarged social circle’ , all that he wanted was to take his dinosaur, his buddy, and play with him. Or probably just run around , jump around in solitude. On so many occasions, his intense play sessions with his Dino, were interrupted by my enthusiast ‘hook up effort’ with other kids. Shlok was more than willing to play with them as long as they connected well with his buddy Dino.
Our relentless poking probably prodded Shlok to reach out to other kids, but on most occasions he was turned away, allowed on ‘conditions apply’ & sometimes left alone in the middle of a play session. My heart ached every time I saw this, maybe even cried, when he would just look at me and say ‘no one wants to play with me’.
If you are a parent reading this, you know how at times you just want to take over ‘make it all right’ for your little ones. But on some occasions you just don’t know how. It was then that we took a step back to think. Think about what did we want from our 5 year old. Think about why we were doing this to him. Think about what it did to him and to us.
It was then that we decided to ‘let go’. Let go of trying to mould him into something that went against his own grain. Let go of the constant effort to align him to societal norms that put premium on ‘extroverted, social’ behaviour. More importantly, we BEGAN enjoying the amazing stories, opinions , conversations with his dinosaurs that emanated from his little world . And of course ‘enabling’ him thrive in what got him through his day.. his own company as he ran in solitude, in full gusto, to his heart’s content and his little companion ‘Mr. Dinosaur’.
