Jordan

As I've mentioned before, Isaac has a number of regular playmates. We've been in three different playgroups over the course of his life, starting when he was about six weeks old, but we've been settled down into one regular group since last fall. Isaac, however, usually isn't that enthusiastic about our weekly playgroup day, and sometimes even claims he doesn't want to go. I think he doesn't like the sheer size of the group, which currently includes 12 kids. Also, he still prefers playing with adults to playing with kids.

However, Isaac does have one friend he's always excited about seeing: Jordan. He used to be in two of our playgroups, but after his baby brother was born their mother decided to simplify her life by cutting back their social obligations. So these days we see Jordan mostly during intimate playdates, which probably aids Isaac's enjoyment of him. At any rate, Jordan is the only child that Isaac actually asks me to set up playdates with.

On Friday we joined Jordan and another good friend, Jasper, at a science class for preschoolers at a local wildlife museum. Besides school, this is the first organized activity Isaac has attended since our music class ended back in June. The class itself was about air, and the teacher had several interesting age-appropriate ways to demonstrate its properties. The boys dropped round and flat objects to observe how they fell, blew through drinking straws to move feathers, and watched as the teacher extinguished a birthday candle beneath an overturned jar. Isaac both watched and participated, and he seemed to enjoy the experience.

But the best part was the half-hour before the class started, when the boys played together in a wooded area outside the museum. As soon as Isaac saw that Jordan was there, he got a big grin on his face, and he smiled almost the entire time they played together. With the facilitation of the two other mothers, the boys ran up and down the hill, played hide-and-seek behind the redwood trees, and chased each other with sticks. My running days are at a temporary end, so I just sat on a ledge and watched the action -- and it was wonderful to watch.

Isaac was much more engaged in actually playing with the other boys than I've observed before, whether at school or during playgroup. I think this was partly because the other mothers made a real effort to get the kids to interact with one another. I had hoped this social encouragement would also happen at his school, but instead they take the laissez faire approach. I suppose I should help him interact with the kids more during playgroup, but I'm usually busy talking with my friends -- so I'm modeling social interaction in a different way!