Wanted: Playmates

Now that my son is spending day in and day out with me, I am truly beginning to understand how much he needs to be with children his age. It doesn’t matter if they merely engage in parallel play, have a difficult time sharing toys, or decide to speak in gibberish together. My toddler is in need of a social life.

We’ve constantly noticed how his eyes twinkle when other children our in the area. Strangers or no, it seems that Matthew feels kindred ties with his similar-sized tykes.

Once, at a friend’s son’s birthday party, Matthew attempted to strike out on his own on one of those plastic slide-tunnel-house contraptions, alongside rowdy older boys. At one point, I almost panicked: there was my two-year old being squished by three eight-year olds… until I noticed the giant smile he had on his face. To him, he was part of a group, his own barkada of boys having fun.

Can you spot him?

Another time, we went to Tiendesitas on a whim and to escape cabin fever. We grabbed a couple of fruit shakes and decided to watch The Jerks who were performing onstage.  Normally, Matthew would be quite entranced by a live band. His attention was diverted however by a brother and sister duo who were running around. (They must have been 5 and 4 years old.) Matthew decided to join in on the chase—never mind that they alternated between ignoring him or banning him from their table. He was having the time of his life.

In Boracay, for the holidays, we were lucky enough to be next door to a couple with a son the same age as Matthew. It didn’t matter that the Luka did not speak English. After breakfast one day, Matthew had taught him the chorus to Queen’s Bicycle Race.

In the world he knows, Matthew has about just two other regular playmates, and when I say regular I mean it in the sense that they’ve played often enough to know each other by name. The first is his cousin Iñigo, who is a month younger and my brother’s son. The problem is that they live quite far and even if we try, we’d be lucky if we see each other once a month for the boys to play.

The other playmate is our friends’ three year old son, Sancho. From barkada gatherings to out-of-town trips to spending some holidays together, I suppose you can say that these two have bonded over their short years.

I would have said that there was another one, three and a half year old Mikel, who is my brother-in-law’s step-grandson (don’t ask), but a recent playdate made us see some sort of antagonism coming from Matthew. Which is rare and very out of character. We’ll give it another try though.

What I’m interested in, though, is something like structured regular playdates. I’m hoping I don’t need to resort to Gymboree and its like soon; the expense can be quite big, actually. And if that becomes an option, I may as well look into preschools. While I still appreciate Gymboree, I find that it focuses more on the child-parent (or in other cases, the child-yaya) relationship, than child-friend one, because every child is supposed to be accompanied by an adult (except for the special class for older kids).

Recently, i’ve been reading up and blog-hopping on other options, and this one caught my eye: How to Start a Children’s Art Group on the Artful Parent. I like the fact that it gives the concept of art in child’s arena a very pragmatic view: the kids are not expected to do art the entire time and actually spend most of the time playing together. And the adults have a chance to interact and have grown up conversation, that is if they’re not trading notes on toilet training and temper tantrum handling. In any case, any other parents out there interested?

The other thing I have on my wishlist is quite simple: a playground to run around in with other kids. That may require moving to a gated village, but that’s not happening anytime soon.

I suppose this is what we get for learning to live so independently and isolated that seems to be requisite in this city. It used to be that we could knock on neighbors’ doors and then be on a bike ride or play patintero in the driveway. Now, our kids have a social calendar that takes effort to fill up—a responsibility I should seriously look into.