Single Child Syndrome

I have often told, bragged, that we are very fortunate with our child. It is no secret that we are older parents, and I worried about how life was going to be with a young child while we became familiar with our 50s. However, for the most part, we have a very easy, go-with-the-flow child. We never experienced a temper tantrum while out in public. While she did throw some, they were always in the home. We did not experience colic or if we did it was minor. She loves going to school, and she loves to learn. I can hear the eyes rolling….really – an entry about how great his daughter is? Ahhhhh, nope. My colleagues can attest to the fact that she is given me days of frustration. She causes me to worry about the future. She is a normal child which means there are issues.

One thing that has come up in the past, and we saw it again today, is that our daughter suffers from what I call “Single Child Syndrome.” This is not to say that she is spoiled and gets everything she wants – I really thought her first word would be No. As a matter of fact, I fear that sometimes I say no a little too often just because I worry that she will expect everything and with no sharing involved. No the syndrome I write of deals with social issues. She is friendly, kind, and outgoing, but she is overly cautious when it comes to introducing friends.

Today proved to be a day where this syndrome reared its ugly head. With it being a long weekend, we decided to get out of town. We went up to the snow for some fun. Knowing that we would not be able to last the weekend, we allowed our daughter to bring a friend. I hate to admit it, it is normally so much easier when she has a playmate. This playmate is one of a few that she considers to be her BFFs. Things moved along just as expected. By 11 a.m., the two were going strong and at an energy level that would have wiped me out by 9:30.

We also knew and were excited that friends of ours who had moved away in November were back in town. Their daughter also fit into that small group of our daughter’s BFFs. What a great day to bring the three together.

The local friend arrived and introductions were made. Instantaneous friendships seemed to be blossoming. The girls went out and built a fortress and snowman. We begged them to come in to eat lunch so that we could go sledding. All seemed right with the world. We ate, redressed, grabbed the sleds, and took off for the hill. The three of them a common day Three Musketeers.

Sledding started off well. Slowly, I could hear, little issues started to arise. Questions about who would ride with whom, what position each would take in the sled, and which person needed to pull the sled back up. I let it going – hoping. At one point, our daughter crashed right next to me. Not a big crash, more of a roll out of the sled. She looked at me and stated that she was hurt. Unless some invisible tree or rock had been struck, there was no cause for injuries. I deduced that the injury was internal and dealt with the heart. I didn’t want to bring up my conclusions. When she stated she wanted to go down to the swing, I reminded her that her friends still were at the top waiting on her. She grudgingly moved back up the hill.

They made one more run and she moved off to the swing to be alone. The girls followed. The even suggested making a snowman. My wife tried to get our little one involved with the construction team instead she moved off to the tree line and climbed onto a stump. We let her be. The other girls kept calling to no avail. After five minutes, I walked over.

She sat there pushing the snow around and licking some off of her gloves. I could see the tears she tried so hard not to let flow. When asked what was wrong, she stated she didn’t know. She didn’t know why she was upset. It just hurt. We talked through a few different issues. I called out topics waiting to see if she would know. She didn’t.

We talked about her sharing her friends. I reminded her that she did this every day at school. The tears started coming, I feared her cheeks would freeze. We talked about the fact that she brought other friends to our get-away and shared her local friend – “Daddy, this is different. They don’t need me.” Bingo. Light Bulb. Only child.

Growing up, I had three brothers to share. I shared my parents. I shared them from the day I was born considering I am the youngest. Since I knew how to share my brothers, sharing my friends was easy. Our daughter hasn’t  had to share us or her friends. Now at the age of eight, she felt a pain in her heart that had never been felt. She could not explain it or understand it.

We talked about past friends having to share her local friend. The difference was that that sharing was a straight line. Due to slight age differences and different hobbies, the one commonality that the two new friends shared was our daughter. Today, the straight line took on a different shape. Instead of a line, these friends had a triangle. All three had things in common. The two new friends didn’t need our daughter to see common items. This scared her. I tried to explan how great it was that a new friendship had been forged. It didn’t help. We let her heart cry out its pain. It took a few minutes. We walked over and joined my wife and the other two. In the end, a new snowman took shape, more rides down the hill, and a lot of giggles took place.

It Is now 8:00 p.m. The local friend departed – hugs all around. We have eaten and the girls walked themselves upstairs a half-hour ago. All three are friends. Hopefully, our daughter has learned a little bit about what it takes to be a good friend and part of a bigger group.

The weird thing is that in the midst of all this, I had to fight the feeling of failure. I think as parents, we want to have the best for our child. We want them to grow without pain. We take their learning pains as possible failure on our part. We did not fail. As a matter of fact, failure on our part would have been stepping in too soon or too strong. Our jobs are to help the children reach conclusions and learn from them. I hope today, we succeeded.