Alliances

Josh has been asking for a friend. He tells me all the time, "Mom, get me a friend."

So far his request has been countered with our request that he actually speak to people and attempt to make friends at soccer. Well... finally the boys have made a friend in the neighborhood. Josh, Jack and the "new boy" rode bikes all afternoon, played soccer and in general pretty much acted like pre adolescent boy dorks. It was awesome!
Bike riding has become an absolute obsession around here. It's all they want to do!
I wasn't prepared for anyone else to be learning to ride their bike without training wheels just yet... boy that process is hard on a parent... the continual bent over running behind the bike position, the scrapes, the screams, the drama. Justine has been riding her bike so much lately, she actually rode the training wheels right off her bike. They fell off in the driveway. And so the process began again. Me running behind her, her riding into the brick mailbox, the skinned knees and the of course in typical Ellerbee style, the drama.

What I didn't bargain for was the drama Jameson experienced due to the fact that she would now be the only one with training wheels. We can barely get her to even ride with the training wheels on. She just now learned to do that. She is not ready to ride without training wheels as she absolutely freaks out riding WITH the training wheels, but I suppose she saw it as a rite of passage or something. So Justine is screaming at me to run behind her some more while Jameson is crying because I didn't take her training wheels off.

Jameson decided in usual Jameson style, that sitting in the garage pouting would be a better use of her time than practicing riding her bike WITH the training wheels. And so that's what she did. I did try to get her to ride Jaiden's bike without training wheels, but she freaked out and kept jumping off the bike. I'm hoping that she will understand when I say it just takes more time to learn. She never did come around. She never did interact with the rest of the kids in our front yard... (yes there were about ten.) She stayed off to herself... glaring at everyone else.



The funny part about it is that Josh had made a friend. Josh was busy. Josh was not giving her any attention. Josh was having fun. The kids were all playing, and she could have played with them, but she chose to sit in the garage, away from everyone else and pout. She finally came to me and said she needed to tell me something... but she would only tell me inside... knowing that this is the usual method to tattle on someone, I told her she could tell me in the garage or not at all. Then she couldn't remember what she was going to say... "Oh, I forget, ummm...Oh nevermind..." I knew full well she wanted to tell me something, but she was afraid to. I finally told her she could share with me what was on her mind or she could go inside. Eventually she whispered to me that Josh was being mean to her. Josh had been no where near her in the last 2 hours. Josh was having fun and being a kid. Josh had made a friend. She was mad because he was having fun and she wasn't. This was the first time she has ever complained about Josh... usually it's the other kids who are being mean to her. It really made me think about a lot of the aspects of their relationship. It has always been them against the world. She cannot answer a question without looking to him for his approval. She really depends on him. For the first time, he was really doing his own thing without a care in the world and she didn't like that one bit.



I am so happy Josh is making friends and having fun. He's finally getting to be a kid and learning to interact with others. I couldn't be happier for him. I'm hoping that as he sees how easy it is to make a friend here in front of our house with all of us around, he will be able to branch out at soccer and make some more friends.


And for Jameson... I guess I hope for her to learn to be happy for Josh as he grows and matures and learns to make friends and that she learns to make some herself.
And for me... I guess I hope for all of the kids to learn to ride their bikes so that I no longer have to run behind the wretched little things (the bikes, not the kids).