Friends Are Hard To Find

Poor Marshall has been having a lot of trouble in the friend department lately. He has 1 friend from church that he likes to play with, but because of that boy's behavior, we ended up sending him home last time.

Marshall wants to be social. He wants friends so bad. He wants to play with other kids, but we are having trouble finding some.

After school, Marshall and I play on the school playground while we wait for Nate to finish with Safety Patrol. For the past 2 weeks, he has been watching these 3 older kids playing an imaginary game together. It is EXACTLY the kind of thing Marshall likes to play. Ive been coming up with excuses for why I didn't want Marshall playing with them. Today I finally gave him permission to ask if he could play. He asked 1 boy, but he pretended not to hear Marshall. I told him to ask again, which he did. The boy said "I don't know." I told Marshall that means no. He didn't believe me. I decided he needed-no, deserved an answer, so I went up to the kids and told them, "My son asked if he could play with you. You don't have to say yes, but you do have to give him an answer." They started in with all these excuses about why their game was only a 3 player game. I stopped them, and calmly repeated, "You don't have to play with him, but you do have to give him an answer." They said no. Marshall still didn't quite believe me, and then they said no again. We walked away, and he broke down in sobs. Poor kid. It is just so tough when you want so badly to play. It was a tough day for both of us. I wanted to cry too as I held my sobbing boy.

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