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When I was little I envisioned an Only Child as living a life of illuminated, jewel speckled cocooned joy. Having to share a room and everything else with my brother painted a very imaginative picture of the other side of sibling throughout the get-off-it’s-mine years.
But as the now mother of a wonderful Only child, I could have never even imagined the extreme loneliness that could be trapped inside that dazzling shell.
It became quite apparent after 730 requests for us to make him a brother or sister (which adds up to one request per day for the past two years).
So after 730 excuses, explanations and pitifully obvious distraction bribes we decided to tackle the problem in a different way.
If we can’t make more (44 years old-one and done thank you), let’s rent some! At least for an hour or two.
Yes! Play dates! Many Many play dates! The perfect solution to our lonely Only Child problem!
Take him out like a car wash and have him come back all shiny and played with. Maybe the make me one requests will be cut in half this year!
Well easy schmezy in theory.
What I didn’t take into account was that, in order for my son to have friends, I had to make friends first. And I discovered that my rudimentary let’s be friends skills were painfully rusty.
So on top of that, there are so many things to think about for my master plan to work: The kids have to get along… The parents have to get along…. Coordinating time schedules made….Complimentary hygiene beliefs agreed upon, acceptable venue…etc.
I personally have happily maintained a solid handful of great friends throughout the years. And they are a small but mighty group and so enough for me. I was never one who needed a gang of girls or a heavy social activity schedule (I don’t even enjoy shopping…but I swear to come back as a real girl in my next life). In fact, the mere thought of too much girl stuff could make me break out in a cold sweat. So when I had to make friends, I have to admit, I hada very hard time at first.
When was the last time that I had made a new friend?
Hmmm….Well there was…Then, what was her na…. What about….Nope, can’t remember.
But loving my son more than air pushed me to take a leap out of my comfort zone big time.
If I expect him to learn the basics of everything in life then the least I can do is revisit some of them.
I did run into some obstacles. I found that Mom’s with two or more kids that have the awesome and innate ability to take everything in stride can make me look like a hovering lunatic when it comes to my son.
I don’t like looking like a lunatic.
I had such a hard time jump starting my master Play-Date-plan because I was not comfortable with just dropping him off and picking him up later as many willing play-date-moms were suggesting.
Am I a lunatic? How do I just drop The-Reason-I-Live-And-Breathe at someone’s house? Someone that I only know in school-pickup -'let’s-get-the-kids-together-sometime' passing?
Many of them were willing to drop their kids off at my house as well (not knowing me any better) and two of them actually did just that!
Here I had made ready all the appropriate entertainment snacks and beverages to not only supply for the child who was coming to play but his mom as well. But you know what happened? They let the child out of the car and shouted ‘See you in a few hours’ to me and their child and left.
I know, right?
I even tried to coax them inside more than willing to supply a full resume of my non-criminal background and fingerprints along with a complete tour proving that there were no sinkholes or alcoholic relatives partaking on the couch (not that day anyway). Perhaps give them some peace of mind- if they didn’t plan on staying for the full visit.
Now I wasn’t worried about them leaving their
