by Jennifer Cannon

Created on: July 07, 2008

It was a crisp spring day, perfect for walking the half-mile or so through the prettily- landscaped neighborhoods to a good friend's house for some playtime. Our oldest daughters were both two years and a few months old at the time, each with a baby sister and brother respectively. They had a newly finished basement at their house, which had become the designated play area. We let the girls go downstairs to play while we stayed upstairs with our babies and chatted over tea. The door to the basement was left open so that we could hear what was going on, but a nagging voice in my head kept wondering if we shouldn't be a little closer to the action. I wasn't hearing anything too crazy going on, but let's not forget that two year olds aren't exactly known for their diplomacy when it comes to sharing. This was a skill we were still working on. My friend's basement had a nice sitting area off to the side so that we wouldn't have been hovering, but would have still been in full view of them. Finally, I asked "should we be down there?" "Oh no." she said, "they'll work it out." Now, being the semi-neurotic I-don't-want-my-kid-to-do-anything-bad-and-upset-any one kind of mom, this made me a little nervous.

You know how they say you should always listen to your gut? Well, to this day I regret not insisting on being down in that basement to supervise those two little angels. Not more than a few minutes later, the inevitable cries of the "it" that the girls obviously could not work out, were ringing in our ears. We rushed downstairs and my stomach dropped as I saw my daughter clutching a toy, standing over her daughter, who was lying on the floor crying. Did I mention that although our daughters are the same age almost literally, my daughter was a good three inches taller? This did not look good at all! While my friend was busy asking her daughter what had happened, it was perfectly clear to me that they had fought over a toy and in the process of trying to pull it away from each other, her daughter fell down. I immediately scolded my daughter and explained that if she could not share and take turns we would not be able to play. As we led them back upstairs to play where we could see them duh I apologized to my friend profusely and mentioned a piece I had seen on TV just the night before about kids and bullying, how young it can start and that I sure didn't want my kid to be a bully, etc...to which she replied "well actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about that."

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