I was struck by this concept yet again during National Night Out. We met some more neighbors, including several very close to M's age. She played with some. Some were interested in a pet we brought out with us. However, there was one really cool connection.
I'm going to back up a bit. M, along with many highly gifted children, was most often drawn to adults as a child. Playing with other kids was fine, but she was just as often found striking up conversations with adults.
When you think about it, this makes sense. Her intellect was so much more advanced than we were aware, and she was filling a hunger for advanced verbal interaction by targeting adults instead of other preschoolers, etc. Many experts (and complete novices) will express extreme concern over this behavior and it can be mislabelled.
M has outgrown this to a large extent. She still is comfortable talking with adults and enjoys that interaction. She also enjoys interaction with some people her own age, as well as some of just about every age.
I have a theory that she somewhat skipped part of her childhood. When other kids were engrossed in their toys, she could never get very excited about them. She wanted to, and you could see it in her eyes and behavior, but the fun of toys for her was very mild, and sometimes completely absent.
At that time, she was obsessed with animals, weather, and a few other scientific ideas. Mostly, she wanted to consume documentaries and nonfiction books on those subjects. I was sad to think she might be missing out on some of her childhood.
Back to National Night Out. A girl who had been noticing M outside sought her out and asked her to play. This adorable delight is 6-7 years younger than M, which momentarily concerned M, but she said "sure," and they quickly showed how similar they were. I wonder what the kids closer to M's own age thought . .. . it doesn't really matter, but it was very interesting for me to see.
Since then, we have found that we connect very well with the parents of this girl, as well. We seem to be wired the same way. Four females had a good time doing things that wouldn't have been very interesting in other company, but was very fun in this instance. And, since M has taken the Red Cross Babysitters course, she has had the opportunity to babysit her new friend, to the satisfaction of everyone involved.
In our usual group of friends, none of them are the same age as M. One is close in age, but some are only slightly older than the neighbor girl. I find it interesting to see how M interacts with them. Things she wouldn't be interested in playing with on her own, she will get out and excited, creatively play with her friends of all ages. I like to think that she is recapturing some of what she may have missed while she was too busy reading to play with toys.
If you step back a bit and think of your own friends, this makes sense. In school, kids are arranged based on a 12 month period of time of birth. I suppose it's as good a way to divide them as any, but it doesn't always work well. As an adult, how many of your friends were born in that same 12 month period of time? Very few of mine were.
Another evidence of how much this gets ingrained into us is that our kids get steered to play with kids close to their own age. In one family, at least recently, M is more drawn to the girl who is farther from her age, and it seems this girl is more drawn to M than her older sister. Since the adults were in those neat little groups, it seems like we assumed the similar ages would be the closer connection. This is an assumption I am trying to remove from my own outlook.
When we, as adults and parents, interact with other adults, I find another phenomenon that parallels this. Most people we meet assume that we are the same age as them so long as they can relate to our life stage. For example, if someone has college-aged kids, they may assume they are older than we are, since M is younger.
Interestingly, people have children at vastly different ages and this is considered completely socially acceptable, yet we make this assumption . . . I wonder if this is the lingering effect of school grouping.
It goes a step further. Most people assume that my husband and I are the same age. While there isn't a huge age gap, there is a significant one. Unless something triggers the information, such as a reference to older TV shows or music, people assume that we are the same age.
The encouraging thing about all of this is that people who you get along with tend to assume similarity and connection. I find this incredibly comforting during a time of dissension in various groups in our country.
I do not write this with an agenda, moral, or lesson, but simply muse about an experience that I am witnessing and comparing it to other experiences in my own life.
As Dr Deb Ruf said, "you hang out with people who get your jokes." May you have many wonderfully connected people in your life of all ages, and encourage those satisfying relationships in the lives of those around you. Always.
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