Who My First Friends Were

The concept of time broadens. Recently Leo asked me who his first friends were. He's asked me many times in the past, and each time there is a new layer of understanding, like the layers in an onion as they say. We started with the friends he knows in town, which is what I thought he was driving at. His oldest friend, Janie, he met when he was almost 2 (just right around when he was diagnosed). I finally explained that techincally, his first friends were from my Mommy and Me group in NYC when Leo was just an infant. Tiny infant friends. He said, “Wow, I’m sure you had to take a lot of classes on how to be a mommy. You had to learn so much since I was born first”.

I thought, what irony! The assumptions he made on his own about being a mother. If only we had all taken mommy classes before the hospital handed us our tiny newborns, and fend for ourselves. Leo assumed, that of course we all had to be trained in order to do what we do. After all, that's what HE does, right? Goes to school, learns stuff at home. Experiences life. He's fully aware of what he understands versus the breadth of understanding that us adults in theory have.

It also reminds me of what a blogger said once, that our children are at their most intuitive time of their lives as toddlers. They do not have enough life experience just yet to make assumptions and generalizations, and better yet make false assumptions. I had to break the news - all of us new parents pretty much wing it. Nothing prepares you for parenthood.