August 8, 2005 - Monday
Today after their swimming lesson at Connor's house, Connor, Rip, Harry, and Jeremy started playing with some water guns. They were squirting trees and the cars and the house and inevitably they started aiming at each other, except for Jeremy. He was off in his own little world as usual and they weren't interested in him. On previous occasions Connor's mother had said that they shouldn't squirt each other, although that wasn't explicitly stated today, since they were just out of the pool it didn't really matter to me. It did matter to Harry and he started telling Rip and Connor not to squirt him. Connor stopped, but Rip kept on him a little and Harry started to be more animated with a louder, whiny, "no."

I think this is an area where Harry's going to need to find his own way, but after it was over I had a word with him about it. I told him that there's a balance between standing up for oneself and being part of a group of friends and sometimes you have to put up with a little in order to play along. I tried to tell him that he had to figure out how to talk to his friends, but that he might want to be a little more low-key. Unfortunately, I think he thought I was mad at the way he talked and he just kept saying "OK, OK."

Somewhat relatedly, on the way to school this morning, after we'd left Jeremy at Mary's house, I told Harry that Connor's mom was going to get him before lunch. He's reaction, an overly polite "thank you, daddy, I love that, I haven't gone to Connor's early before, only Rip has. I love that," kind of took me by surprise.


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