Two Laila park stories

[dorchadas]

We take Laila to the park just about every day to get some of her energy out, and the park that's closest to us is designed for babies and toddlers far more than for older kids so there's plenty of equipment for her to burn off her energy. She's taken to running around the edges of the park through the leaves, and that's led to two stories in the past week:

One

Lately Laila has taken to walking along the raised concrete border of the park, either holding onto one of our hands or by herself, and a few days ago she ran into a boy around her age who wanted to do the same thing but going the other way. They got close to each other, then very close, and then Laila--who is used to everyone who gets close to her face wanting to give her a kiss--closed her eyes and leaned in to "MWAH" the boy. With a very 😐 expression, the boy turned his face away, stepped carefully around Laila, and kept walking along the concrete border.

Two

There's another kid at the park who seems to just have a bad disposition. Twice now he's yelled "NO! NOOOOOO!" when Laila came nearby and once yelled "NO BABIES!" at her when she went over to see what he was playing with. sashagee even told me that one time he even pulled his fist back like he was going to hit Laila, and when his father stepped in and told him that he had to apologize he started throwing a tantrum. sashagee overheard him talking to another father at the park, saying, "Sometimes I just don't know what to do. He's just so angry."

This is a Laila story because Laila still just takes it all with a smile--she doesn't take it personally at all. Even when the kid yelled no loudly at her, she just looked at him and kept on going. She's so pure-hearted.

Comments

[symbioid]

Aww <3 that is such sweet attitude. I hope she can carry it with her, she seems to have good role models.

I hope the angry kid can handle whatever the issue is. I was almost wondering if it was due to him feeling like he's "not a baby anymore" you know how kids can do that, like they have to prove that they're older than they are. Like maybe just getting to grips with their identity as "not a baby"... I know I've seen at least one example of a kid like that in life.

But in the end it sounds like the poor guy has other issues, hopefully it can get sorted out.

[dorchadas]

That's true--"age appropriate" whatever always seems too young when you're a kid and want to do the cool older kid stuff. There is another (older) kid at the park who sashagee told me he played with just fine, so maybe there's something to that.