Outta the mouths of babes

So this colleague I mentioned earlier with the new three year old daughter is a good friend of mine, and one of the things I've wanted to do since she brought her daughter home was have them both over for a playdate. Our kids are almost the same age, after all, and I thought perhaps the little girl would enjoy having a peer to play with. 

I did want to wait until they were more bonded as a family before doing so, so I haven't set anything up, nor mentioned it to The Boy at all. But meeting her today, seeing her speech issues, I have to wonder: I have a kid who gets frustrated with his younger daycare mates, who frequently expresses this frustration to the daycare providers ("He's not answering me! He's not listening to me!") I get frequent accounts of who can and can't talk at the daycare, and the speech issue is a dividing line between "babies" and "friends". He will not play with the babies, he cannot communicate with them. And I think the last thing this wee girl needs is a peer to play with who not only points out the things she cannot do, but gets frustrated with her because of it.

So I did what The Boy does best, and talked to him about it. I mentioned that mommy's friend has a new daughter who is the same age as he is, but she can't talk. That I think we should invite her over to play, but that she won't talk to him. He determinedly told me that she was only a year old ("Babies who are only one can't talk, mommy") but when I reiterated again that she was in fact three years old, but couldn't talk, that he could talk to her and she would understand but that she couldn't "use her words" to talk to him, he paused for a moment and said:

"Mommy, that's ok. I'll share my words with her, and then she'll be able to talk."

Mommy melted. He seemed very pleased with this solution.

I further explained that while that was a tremendously nice thing to do, that it wouldn't help and that she would just have to learn to talk on her own. And then of course he wanted to know why she couldn't talk. So I explained, very carefully, that I didn't know, but that maybe it was because she hadn't had a mommy or daddy before, and that this made her very sad, but that now that she had a new mommy (two, actually) that she was going to learn and be happier. 

My son was further intrigued to learn that she had no daddy, although less surprised than he was about the no talking, since several previous classmates had similar family situations. But he did then pipe up with, "That's ok, I'll share my daddy with her too."