Imagine knowing your circle of friends your whole life. What I mean is, imagine if you don’t ever remember not knowing them. They were always there. And because of this, you never needed to make new friends, because you always had your friends. This is the life of a Pre-K graduate.
From the time Deanna was 8 weeks old, she went to the same place every day of the week. It was her second home; she knew all the teachers and all the kids in the school. Although she was excited to graduate and start camp with Delaney this summer, the last week of school she started to ask some questions at dinner. How will I make friends? What if a group is playing, how I do play too? They don’t know me…
We did what any good corporate parent would do, we began role playing with her. We would pretend we were her age, change our names, what we liked and she would walk up to us and the “game” would begin. She loved this game. It gave her some ideas what to say to a new friend and how to approach a group which is even extremely intimidating to most adults.
So the first day of camp came and she was more than excited, armed with how to make new friends, confident. We arrived and she looked around with her big eyes, still excited, but froze a moment, grabbed my hand and said, I don’t know where to go, what to do.” I took her hand and said, “you sure do, let’s go!” I found two girls playing Candyland, walked up and introduced myself and Deanna, stating we loved Candyland and would love to play, would that be ok? The girls said yes, Deanna sat down and off I went to work.
It has been fun to hear about the new friends she is meeting as the week goes on. Each day it gets easier and she is using the tricks we taught her when we role played leading up to the start of camp.
I understand it can be hard to make new friends, well, let me rephrase that. I don’t understand( I mean have you met me?) but I do have tremendous compassion for the feelings a new surrounding can bring. But we can all learn from the five year old. Practice, role play, get comfortable with the idea and then if needed, grab your partner to give you the push you need.
