Daycare potluck

Yesterday evening was the annual daycare summer barbeque; I made dessert, given that that's pretty much the only thing I know how to make. It's been several months since the last meet-up of any variety, and in those intervening months many of the kids have left; this meant that there's a whole new crop of parents for me to get to know. Do I even need to say -- hey, introvert, here's a fun evening -- a whole pile of people you don't know!! Whee!

Anyway, it was not that bad. I can make small talk if I want to, and it's even easier when there's a steady stream of available banter: the children. 

I met the mom of a new little boy who is the same age -- older by a month -- than my own. You'd never know it, though -- he's tiny and never speaks. While we were talking, The Boy came over and said something to me and she looked at me in astonishment and said "He speaks!" and then went on to explain that her little boy only has a few words that he knows. She's an international student, so I posited that might be because if a child is learning two languages at once, they often find that hard and don't speak as early as others. 

"No," she said. "We just don't talk to him much." She laughed in an embarrassed way. She's a student, she explained, her husband is an adjunct lecturer, so they are very busy at home and do their own thing and don't talk to their two year old much. 

At first I thought ... uh, that's not that great and then I thought -- well, you know, I don't think that my own grandmothers went about their day with a running monologue, as I was told to do, so that my child would learn to speak. This mother was a very attentive, loving mother -- it just wasn't a focus for her. I think her little boy would have found it easier to settle into daycare if he spoke more, but that's just what worked for my child -- maybe it wouldn't have made a difference for hers.

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Many of the families brought their older children with them to the potluck -- to this one, one of the little boy's fathers brought his two older girls, who were probably 7 and 5-ish. The Boy took a liking to the older one, a lovely dark haired beauty of a girl, and went over and asked her to play. She, being the polite and kind type, said yes and took his proffered hand. He then led her over to me and said proudly "This is MY mommy."

I think those are good instincts, really. The first thing you do with a nice girl? Introduce her to your mother.