Not one, but two 5 year olds and the single mom

Yes, yes, I know it's been ages since I wrote. I have no good excuse. I'm lazy and I'm a procrastinator. Deal with it.

I had an interesting experience recently. A good friend of mine wanted to take his older son on a backpacking excursion, one that would be too long and grueling for the younger son to tag along for, so I volunteered to keep him. We'll call him "M."

M is the same age as my son -- only about four months separate them -- so they're quite the dynamic duo when they're together. And by "dynamic," I, of course, mean "destructive force of nature."

In order to corral their abundant energies and point them in a more productive direction (i.e. more productive than converting the stairs in my house to a makeshift sledding ramp or something), I took them to the Children's Museum on Saturday. They played and explored in general merriment all afternoon with minimal friction between them. Sunday, I took them to a local park with a great playground for a little more fun and games (and hopefully energy drainage).

By mid-Sunday afternoon, we'd had about 28 hours of time together, and the boys were starting to be a little worse for wear. And this is where one of the differences between them started to show. My son is an only child and is quite accustomed to and adept at playing alone. M, on the other hand, is a younger brother who has had a built-in playmate his entire life.

They had been playing upstairs in my son's room when I heard a clamor and came to the stairs, only to find M on his way downstairs crying over something and my son at the top of the stairs loudly proclaming his innocence and flinging accusations of his own at M. In an effort to defuse the situation, I asked if they'd rather play alone for a few minutes until everyone calmed down and we could get along again.

They answered in unison.

"No," M said.

"Yes," my son said.

I bribed M with a video gameto distract him until my son was ready to play again, and that seemed to placate everyone. M happily played the game while my son stayed in his room doing whatever he wanted to for a while. My son came downstairs a little while later and announced that he was ready to play with M again, which they scampered off to do with little conflict for the rest of the afternoon.

What I took away from the situation, though, was A) amused observation of the difference between a child who often plays alone and is thus completely content to have some time to himself and a boy who's never had that luxury of alone time and would rather not get along with his playmate than be on his own and B) a sense of some accomplishment that my son was able to recognize his own need for a little "time out" from playing together, take a few minutes to gather himself and then be ready to resume the fun. That's a handle on his needs and emotions that most adults haven't mastered. Not too shabby.