Nov 09 2008
Love on the Soccer Field?
image by Petr Kratochvil
The past two weeks, Gus has been goofing off with another player on his team. He and the little girl, T., have been distracting each other a great deal, chasing each other around the field instead of playing the actual game of soccer. It’s been rather cute and considering that he often keeps to himself, I welcome any opportunity for him to connect to a peer.
Well he connected a little more during the game yesterday. The mentors were doing a good job keeping both players focused, but occasionally, they would bump into each other and play a quick game of Tag before getting back to drills. At one point, he decided to grab her hand and they walked downfield together. Insert image of jaw dropping here.
Of course I couldn’t resist the temptation to ask if she was his girlfriend and to needle him just a bit. He took it in stride and said that she was not in fact his girlfriend, but his rival. Glad to see the Pokemon lingo is still firmly embedded in his brain. We actually had an interesting conversation before he went to bed about who his friends were. He never seemed to give this much thought, but last night he said that T. was not his friend, and in truth, they don’t know each other well, so in a way I guess he’s right. But he did tell me something distinctive about each boy in his class (all boy) and he had the happiest expression on his face. They are his friends. So much for never being able to forge relationships like the idiot psychologist tried to tell us years ago when he was diagnosed. Gus will form the kinds of relationships that he wants to and on his own terms.
And if he wants to call a girlfriend a rival, who am I to stand in his way?
awww, this random post touched me. Glad I clicked onto it!
Cheers