Friendship

It's been a learning experience for me to watch my kids grow in a foriegn country. Making friends has its challenges anyway, but it is more difficult (I think) when two kids are from different cultures. But, since we moved to where we currently are, my kids have been more at home since there is a big Indian population in our community.

So much so, that I've had one father comment to me that he is worried his son only has Indian friends and so he encouraged his son to mingle more and bring his other American and Chinese friends home for play dates.

I've never chosen my kids' friends, or so I thought -until I realized that I'd unconsciously been socializing with other Indian parents from my sons' schools over the years -sorta forcing a friendship there.

As it turned out, my older son has had other kids' around who he obligingly played with, even if they were of different temperament and had vastly different interests.

Now that he is older, he is putting his foot down and verbalizing who he wants over and who he will be polite to during a visit. That puts a damper on my entertaining and I struggle with having to make choices between which of my friends I can see etc. One option would be to have just the adults socialize in a configuration that is feasible I suppose.

But, my younger one is more gregarious and loves to have all kids over except when he is trying to pretend to be like his brother.

Meanwhile, my older son says he likes it best when he is out playing with his friends in an outdoor sport like basketball, tennis etc - a barb at my confiscation of PS2. D agrees that boys have to play a sport or PS2 to socialize unlike girls who can just get together talk, giggle, paint nails.. So, the pressure is on to bring out PS2!

But to limit playing the video game, we have to cut down the socializing anyways -since playing one day at ours and another day at yet anothers' and so on is too much.

Luckily, that works for my schedule currently. But come summer, it's going to take some creative thinking on my part!!

Come to think of it, my parents never socialized or met my (nor my siblings') friends' parents!!! We turned out ok -right!?