Our boys have taught us so much from their interactions in kindergarten. Each day when our oldest got off the bus, I would ask him how was school, who did he play with, did he sit with anyone at lunch and how was recess. He would tell me the names of the kids he sat with, how they played tag and so forth on the playground. That was pretty much all that he shared.
In October, I went on a field trip with his class. Imagine my surprise when his “best friend” didn’t speak a word of English. He was assigned to my group and the teacher asked me to help explain the names of animals to this little boy as we saw them on the farm. As I was telling this boy, that the animal in front of us is a turkey; my son interrupts me and says, “Mommy, he doesn’t speak English. He speaks Mandarin Chinese!” It amazed me that in all the afternoons he talked about playing with this boy and eating lunch with him that his lack of English never came up.
Our youngest started kindergarten this week. At dinner we were asking him about his day and who he played with, ate lunch with etc. His continuous answer was “my best friend”. We asked him what his best friend’s name is and he simply answered “I don’t know”. By the end of the week, he did know his name but it was not important.
We have chuckled over these stories; but it really is amazing what doesn’t matter to little kids. They simply enjoy playing with certain people and the details don’t matter. It doesn’t matter what they wear, what they look like or even what language they communicate in. We could all learn to look at the person and not the details. The more open we are the more we will get from our daily interactions.
