Hellobee

I have always been a social person who enjoyed the company of others. So when Drake was born, I was excited at the idea of taking him on playdates to make friends for not only himself, but me as well.  I thought back to my own friends, some of which I have known since my nursery kindergarten days, and hoped that Drake would also make similar lifelong friends.

I signed us up for Gymboree classes when Drake was around 7 months old.  I liked the idea of taking a class with Drake to spend more one on one time, as well as exposing him to different people and surroundings. When we first started, Drake was too young too really interact with his classmates. All the kids were around the same age, so for much of the first year we attended, Drake and his peers did parallel play — meaning they played around one another but not with each other, which was normal for that age set. I made a few parent friends, but sadly nothing really stuck due to schedules, distance, and life.

I continued to take Drake to Gymboree, signing him up for music class when he was around 18 months of age.  At that time I noticed that some children had started to notice the others in the class.  Sometimes they would become curious when they saw one of the other children playing and would go over to check out what they were doing.  Drake, however, never seemed to do that despite plenty of opportunities and lots of variations in classes, toys, and classmates. I thought it was a little strange, but at home Drake regularly engaged us and his extended family, so I wasn’t too concerned.  I even asked the teacher at one point, and she said some kids just parallel played a bit longer and it was normal. Around that same time, Drake switched babysitters to one who had three boys of her own, and watched another little boy the same age as Drake.  She also said it was normal that he didn’t interact with her sons too much, and that the other little boy also hadn’t really done so yet either.

As Drake got older, I switched from Music class to Art class for a change of pace.  Drake was closer to two at this point, and I noticed that he still seemed to parallel play.  Most of the other children in the class would engage one another at various points and some would even engage Drake.  A few times Drake would join in the fun, mostly running around and screaming, but he would always be the first to drop out of the game and return to my side, doing what he wanted.  I also noticed when I dropped Drake off at my babysitter’s house, her youngest son and the other boy she watched would often come running to the door when Drake showed up, eager to play.  They would call him by name and rush around him, and oftentimes Drake would walk away from them or walk to the babysitter to ask to watch his favorite show (even at 3 1/2 years of age Drake loves watching Baby Einstein which he calls Guy).

His babysitter would often tell her son and the other boy to leave Drake alone, that he needed time to settle in and relax before playing with them and they would go scampering off to play while Drake would sit in the other room playing and watching his show by himself. I asked her a few times if this was normal behavior for him, and she said yes — he tended to need some time on his own when first coming in. I asked if he would eventually play with them and she said sometimes. Many times she said he would play near them, bringing what he was doing with him and sitting by them, but play separately. She laughed that oftentimes when she took everyone outside to play on the swing set, Drake would bring a book along with him.  He would set it out next to my babysitter’s chair and play with the kids, but shortly would return to sit next to her, look at his book and chat with her in his toddler babble. She said while he could and did play with the other children, he also seemed content to play by himself as well.

That summer, when Drake was two, we went on a vacation to Virginia to visit my best friend who happened to also have a son three months older than Drake.  It was so nice to visit my friend and to see Drake and her son play and interact together.  Drake certainly did play with her son, and I was reassured that he was developing normally.  One incident did stick out in my head on our trip there though. We had taken the boys to the park to play.Drake got interested in a stone path and started to play with the stones by running his hands over them again and again, making them scatter around him.  My friend’s little boy started to copy him, and the two of them cut a small path with the stones.

After some time my friend’s son grew bored and the noises of the other children on the playground drew his attention. He abandoned Drake to go find a new friend (one that was more interested in playing with something other than rocks!). Drake didn’t seem to notice, care, or even mind that my friend’s son had left.  I tried to get him to go play on the playground with the other children, but he wasn’t interested and continued on his rock game.

After a little while when he decided he was done playing, he didn’t head to the playground and went in the exact opposite direction, heading on a path down to the lake. When we were finally able to corral Drake back to the playground to find my friends, I saw them watching as their son ran around the playground chasing other children. I asked Drake a few times if he wanted to join and he made a small attempt to climb after them before nixing the idea and sitting on the bench instead with Mr. Chocolate.

When Drake started pre-school this year, we started to go on playdates for the first time. Before that we didn’t have any friends Drake’s age so I was excited to finally be on the way to making solid friendships for Drake and me. After a playdate or two, I noticed that Drake often would go and do his own thing.  He liked exploring the house we were in rather than playing with his friends.  On one playdate he found the TV room with toys and decided he wanted to play there… alone, whereas the other boys and their moms were all in the playroom playing together. At a birthday party when all the other kids were watching the entertainment, Drake wandered into the playroom and once again played alone happily until it was time for us to go.

Drake’s pre-school is wonderful in that they often will take iPad photos of the kids and send them to you while the kids are in school.  I love it when I’m home with Juliet and see a photo of Drake and his day while he is at school. After receiving so many photos over the school year, I often noticed that in many group photos, Drake is off alone or to the side doing something different from the group.

It has taken some time for me to see and realize that my son simply marches to the beat of his own drum.  While he clearly can play with other children, I feel he deliberately and intentionally doesn’t choose or want to all the time. At times I wondered if something was wrong with him; at times I wondered if I had done something wrong to influence this behavior. And then I just came to see that Drake is the way Drake is because that’s whats Drake wants.

It’s funny because in many ways I see my own father (whom I lost in 2012) in Drake. Many of the stories I heard of my father when he was growing up sounded so similar. My father could be a very social person — he had many friends through the years many from his nursery and kindergarten years (a testament to this is how many reached out to my mother and me after his passing to express their regrets), but he was a bit of a loner in many ways too.  He liked what he liked and did what he wanted when he wanted, even if it wasn’t always popular or conventional.

The story that stuck out to me the most was an experience when I was on a family vacation as a child. We decided to hike this trail along with all the other tourists of that area, but somewhere along the trail something happened that caused a halt in the path. Because of the large number of people, there was a traffic jam. My father got tired of it and instead of walking the path like everyone else, he cut up an embankment and disappeared into the woods, determined to find his own way instead. My mother and I continued on the slow trek back and when we eventually made it back, there was my father waiting for us, clearly having been there for some time thanks to his detour.

I loved my father but I always knew as I got older that he was different, that he saw things differently and not everything conventional worked for him.  At times it made him seem aloof or odd, but he didn’t care at all what others thought; he was fine with the way he was.  As a mother I struggle a little with this as I try to help Drake fit in and be like other children. I don’t want him to stick out too much and be made fun of or seen as strange, but I also see in him an individualism that I realize I shouldn’t try to extinguish either. I feel it’s a fine line to work with as there is nothing wrong with embracing who you are and knowing what you want, even if it’s different from convention. But too much deviation can make you also stand out in a negative as well.

What is even more startling at times for me is that I see this quality in myself as an adult. But as a child it was muffled and repressed down through the way my mother raised me, and the way my father was put down for standing out or acting odd.  On one hand, I wonder if my mother was worried in the same way I am about her child being different, but on the other hand I wish I had been able to be myself more growing up and not finding this part of myself only when I became an adult.

My hope is that as Drake grows, I will be able to find a way to nurture and allow him to continue to be himself in every possible way, while still helping him understand the norms of childhood and social expectations. I absolutely do love this part of him, especially when I am reminded of my own father living on through his grandson, but I also fear the hurt that might come from being different as well. As a mother, it’s hard to not want to shield your child.