Today the kidlets and I spent the afternoon with my dad, step mom and youngest sister (I spent the morning tell Lynden we'd go after his nap). After visiting with them at their house, Lynden playing with playdoh and Alyssa getting fed, we headed out to the park for some outside fun. Our hopes was that the sun was going to come out so we could play at the water park, but no such luck. We settled on the regular playground, which Lynden was perfectly content with since it had slides.
While Lynden and my sister, who is 8, were playing my step mom and I were talking about how Lynden is fairly shy about playing with other kids. She told me kids were funny in how they decided who to play with at a park, she said it was all about "the little girl look". She said kids will not play with another child unless someone gives them a look or a slight nod (usually not noticeable to grown up eyes) and then they play together. If they don't get the look or nod they go their separate ways.
While she was telling me about her theory my sister had run into a girl who was friends with a friend of hers and you could tell she no longer wanted to follow her 2 year old nephews demands to go down the slide over and over again (I don't blame her, I don't enjoy doing it the whole park visit either) and play with this other girl. Well, it just so happened while Lynden was sitting on one side of a double slide a little girl gave him "the nod" (my dad was watching Lynden slide and said it was this tiny little nod) and, as they say, the rest is history. Lynden made his first random park buddy.
They went back and forth from slide set to slide set, they took off together to the big kid swings (well out of my eye sight, so they were told to come back), the teeter-tottered (she sat on one side and Lynden bounced the other side), the chased each other, and did the slide circuit again.
At one point I was munching on some sun chips and Lynden came running over and asked for some. He took 3 - 1 for my dad (since he was watching him slide), 1 for him and 1 for his new buddy. He refused to eat it after she declined it. He even came back over to where we were sitting with Alyssa and placed it on the blanket while his new friend was talking to her dad. When she came back to play with him he ran over picked it up and tried to offer it to her again.
Eventually we had to start getting ready to leave, it was just about dinner time and the wind was picking up. I went over to her dad and asked about his daughter (name, age, etc) and thanked him for letting her play with Lynden.
It was a very proud mommy moment for me, as it really is the first time he has played with another child at a park (that we didn't know). I'm hoping with all the outings we've been doing it's opening up his shell a bit and he will be more inclined to play with more children.
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