At a recent party Leilani and Ian were playing, passing back and forth a little white ball – the first interactive game I ever saw between them. They had played with parents, toddlers, kids before, but not with each other. Karla and I had to help a little occasionally, but they had initiated it, and kept it going too.
A little girl, about 4 years walked up, and took the ball from Leilani. Since little girls are often fascinated with babies I thought she wanted to play with them. I was a little dissapointed that the game had ended, but anticipating a new one to begin. Unfortunately I did not like what I saw. The girl was holding out the ball to the babys, grinning as they reached for it, and then she teasingly pulled it away, repeatedly. Leilani was frustrated. Not wanting to scold someone elses kid, we distracted Leilani with Andy’s camera (waterproof and fairly throwsafe). Leilani grabbed it happily and crawled off – not to far though, because the girl ripped the camera out of her hands and proclaimed “This is not a toy. You can’t have that.” Then she tried to take off with the camera. We were pretty angry at her by then. Andy told her she could not just come here and take all the toys from the babies and I took the camera from her, probably not much gentler than she had taken it from the baby and gave it back to Leilani. The “game” repeated. The girl pulled the camera from Leilani’s hands, and declared she could not have this, and I scolded her, that it was none of her business, and it was perfectly OK for Leilani to have the camera if her parents gave it to her.
At that point her mom – who was nursing the 6 months old brother gave me stink eye and called her daugther over. I was a little embarassed to have lost my cool, but kept watching the little girl. She came back, took Ian’s blanket and walked over to the 1 year old birthday girl, repeatedly throwing the blanket over her head. I was kind of happy that it was not my business anymore, and let the other adults deal with it. The longer I watched the little girl though, the more I felt sorry for her. Both her parents were at the party, her grandmother, and the grandmother’s husband, and neither of them paid any attention to the little girl – but everyone was playing with the little baby brother. For an hour and a half, the little girl wandered around, occasionally teasing a baby or a dog, and obviously very lonesome. Fortunately then the bigger boys and one of the dads started a football game and let her play with them, and she seemed so happy…
In any case, next time I’ll interfere earlier, and try to understand the motivation before I lecture a kid. I also added one more concern about having a second baby…
On a lighter note:
Leilani and Ian playing ball
