Parenting Backfire.

On Wednesdays and Thursdays at preschool they have a half hour of gymnastics before it's time to go home. When I went to pick Will up on Wednesday, he was sitting next to a little girl, Radhika, and they were giggling and conspiring about something. He said goodbye to her, then we left. In the car he was acting mopey, and I saw him making his sad face in the rear view mirror.

It's pretty much this face.

So I asked him what was wrong. Will said, "I miss my new friend. We had so much fun together. I don't know why you had to come pick me up." We talked about how she was probably eating lunch, that she was probably spending time with her family, just like he was spending time with his family.

When I picked him up on Thursday he and Radhika were sitting together again, laughing about something. Will's teacher came up to me and said how cute it was, earlier in the day he walked up to the teacher and said, "I'm going to play with that girl now and we're going to play together all day." His teacher said they did, but then dropped the bomb. "Radhika's moving to full day preschool on Monday, so you should probably prepare Will for that." When I told Will he was devastated. I planned on asking her father if they wanted to get together so the kids could play some time when I picked Will up on Friday, but by the time Evie and I got there she was already gone.

Over dinner Friday night Will was telling me how sad he was that she wasn't going to be in his class anymore. So I tried to sympathize with him and talk with him about the time my best friend in 3rd grade moved away and how sad it made me, and how it's hard to say goodbye to people, but how I had eventually made new friends.

Will said, "What was your friend's name?"

I thought for a moment and said, "I think it was Kathy. Or it might have been Katie. Or--"

Will cut in. "You don't remember her name?"

"Well, it was a long time ago."

Will asked, "Did you ever see her again?"

I said, "Well...no."

"YOU NEVER SAW HER AGAIN? AND YOU DON'T EVEN REMEMBER HER NAME?" And then he started crying.

That was not the intended outcome of our talk.