February 5, 2005 - Saturday
We invited Harry's friend Aidan over to play this afternoon and there turned out to be a kind of strange dynamic. Things went fine, in a big picture kind of way, but Harry really didn't seem to have all that interest in playing with Aidan and Aidan really didn't have all that much interest in playing with Harry or Jeremy. That's not to say that they didn't get along with each other, and they did play some games together, but it was the kind of afternoon when we were directing traffic a little more than we would with, say, Rip or Conner. I pulled out the Thomas trains and encouraged Harry, Jeremy, and Aidan to play with them and they did for a while, but not as long as I might have expected. And they played upstairs in Jeremy's room and Harry's room, but there wasn't all that much interaction. I peeked in once and Aidan was on one side of the room and Harry and Jeremy were together looking at something on the other side. In fact, when Aidan first got here he seemed more interested in telling me about what toys he had and what things he could do than telling Harry.

I think what was going on was simply that Aidan is about eight months younger than Harry and that they are really traveling at different speeds (so to speak) because of it. They are classmates and I know they do play together at school, but I'm going to guess that Aidan aspires to play with Harry more than vice versa. It sounds just like when Harry was in Preschool with Garrett and Ryan. Harry told me those were the kids he played with all the time, but when I asked his teather, Cathleen, she said 'no' and that he played with kids closer to his age, then added that he probably aspired to play with the older kids. It was certainly clear today that Aidan's age put him behind Harry in the sort of world savvy, consciousness of "cool," that Harry has been picking up over the last year. Indeed, watching Aidan, a wonderfully sweet and well-spoken boy, at four was like turning back the clock a year on Harry, reminding me of what Harry used to be like and seeing just how fast they do grow up. It's also likely that Harry was a little tired from not sleeping so much last night (he and Jeremy had another sleepover in Jeremy's room and talked for a long time), combined with swimming this morning. Still, if it were Rip or Conner I think Harry would have gotten up for it. As it was all he seemed to want to do is play with a matchbox car with the side of his face on the floor. I asked him about playing with Aidan and he tried to say they were friends, but he did let out once that he wished Rip and Conner would have come over. It's possible that Harry might have been doing some sort of power play on Aidan, but I really don't think so. It really seemed more like disinterest.


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