Tag: little-kids

Play Dates

March 8th, 2026

“When is she going to be here?”

That was Asher’s endlessly repeated question on Friday. Asher and his kindergarten classmates had Friday off from school. I had spoken to the mother of one of the girls in Asher’s class a few days before, and the mom had suggested that her daughter and Asher have a play date. After school, I asked Asher what he thought of the idea, and his eyes widened as he grinned. He exclaimed,

“Yes! Yes! It will be my first play date!”

Asher thought it was a really big deal, and actually it was. The first play date is a milestone of sorts for a little boy or little girl. It is a major step in how they socialize with other kids. It’s true that our grandson, Asher, went to class every day with this girl, and they interacted while they were in school, but a play date is something different. It’s an unstructured meeting, or perhaps it’s just structured differently. In any case, the children come together in a new environment with new possibilities. That’s exciting. It’s also an opportunity for potential growth, whether or not the kids see it that way.

When I was in kindergarten, eons ago, there were no play dates. You saw your schoolmates in the classroom, but not anywhere else, unless they happened to live in your neighborhood. My parents did not like the idea of me or my six younger brothers interacting with other children, even when we were much older than Asher is. Our family had kind of fortress mentality. Outsiders were looked at with suspicion and sometimes hostility. We were rather isolated, maybe more so than other children of that time.

Our kids had friends from school, and they did sometimes get together with them. I don’t know if we ever had anything that we called a “play date”. The meetings our children had with others were more informal and haphazard. Maybe, it was better like that. I don’t know. Those were different times. Now, it is rare for any parent to stay at home to raise a child. A generation ago, my wife was home with our kids while I worked. My experience with the caregivers of the students in Asher’s kindergarten is that they are all working/studying fulltime. Asher is almost unique in the sense that both of his caregivers, Karin and me, are retired and we can be with him all the time if need be. I doubt that any of his classmates are in a similar situation. Because the adults are so busy with their jobs, it is necessary to carefully schedule any meeting between the children. That means we have to organize play dates, whether we like it or not.

In any case, Asher was enthusiastic about seeing the little girl. The weather forecast to be rainy on Friday, so meeting at a playground was out of the question. We determined that it would work best if the mom and her daughter came to our house for a visit. Asher was ecstatic. As I mentioned, he kept asking,

“When is she going to come?!”

My answer was, “In (fill a number in the blank) hours.”

Then Asher would ask, “Is that a long time?”

That depends on who you are. For me it wasn’t very long. For Asher, whatever I told him was an eternity. At last, his classmate arrived. It took a while for her to get out of the car and into our house since she insisted on putting on a dress over whatever else she was wearing. She looked great when she walked through the front door.

Her mom brought a pizza in with her. We all sat at the dining room table and ate. The girl and her mother often talked together in Spanish, but they spoke in English to Asher, Karin, Asher’s mom, and me. The kids played with Asher’s overabundance of toys. Karin and I sat with the mother and had a long conversation with her. I think that was important to do. The children need to get to know each other better. The caregivers need to do that too. We need to understand each other in order to build trust and a sense of community. It is hard to do that at the school. The adults often seem harried, and it is hard to have any kind of meaningful discussion while a parent is dropping off their child just before class begins.

The Friday session went well. Asher and his friend had a good time, and Karin and I learned some things about the girl’s mom. I feel confident that we will eventually set up another meeting.

Yesterday, I got a text from the father of another of Asher’s other classmates. Asher is very fond of this girl. The dad was excited about getting Asher and his daughter together. Since the weather was supposed to be good, the father and I decided to meet together today at the playground of South Shore Park on the edge of Lake Michigan. I told Asher about this development. At first, he was thrilled. Then he started complaining that he really didn’t want to go to the playground. He wanted a play date with the girl, but I think he wanted her to come to our home. I explained to him that the dad wanted us to meet at a playground. Asher repeated to me that he didn’t want to go here. He was very upset. He started sobbing. I said,

“Okay, I’ll text her dad and tell him that we can’t come for the play date.”

Asher replied firmly, “NO. Don’t do that. It’s fine.”

He still had tears on his cheeks, and he continued, “It’s okay. I should go. I don’t want her to cry.”

This afternoon, Karin, Asher, Asher’s mom, and I met with the girl, her sister, and their dad at the park. It went swimmingly. The kids ran wild. The adults talked and got more familiar with each other. We were at the playground for two hours. It was a good time, truly.

Asher told me, “This is the best play date ever!”

I’m sure it was, at least until the next one.

Waddle

February 4th, 2026

Asher wants stories. He does not want to hear stories from books. He wants my wife and I to make up stories extemporaneously. We try to oblige. Often, he asks for a story when one of us is busy. It’s difficult to come up with coherent tale when you are driving on the freeway or cooking supper. So, we do our best and Asher is sometimes dissatisfied with our feeble efforts.

He hit me up for a story this morning just before breakfast. That was poor timing in that we are always in a rush at breakfast. The boy needs to eat, take his vitamins, brush his teeth, and dress within a half hour timeframe. It’s hard to squeeze a story into that schedule. I agreed to give it a try.

Asked him, “What do you want the story to be about?”

He grinned and said, “A penguin!”

“Okay, this penguin…”

“Grandpa, you have to start a story with ‘Once upon a time’.”

“Okay, so, once upon a time this penguin…”

“Grandpa, what was the penguin’s name?”

I made up a name for the penguin. It was wrong. I asked Asher,

“So, what should his name be?”

“Waddle.”

“Okay, so once upon a time, Waddles the Penguin….”

“No, no, no! Not ‘Waddles‘! It’s just ‘Waddle’! That’s what penguins do!”

“Okay, so once upon a time, Waddle the Penguin came from the South Pole to some place warm. He didn’t like it because he was too hot, so he went to a grocery store and snuck into a freezer display case and started eating Cherry Garcia ice cream. Waddle didn’t have a spoon, so it was kind of messy. He had to eat with his flipper. Then a customer came and got freaked out and the customer yelled, ‘I don’t want to buy a penguin! I just want a carton of Cherry Garcia!’. Waddle left the store.”

Asher asked me, “Then what happened?”

“Hmmmm, he walked back to the South Pole.”

“That’s a long way, Grandpa.”

“Yeah, it took him a while. When he got to the South Pole, he looked fo his best friend named Fisher.”

“Why was his friend named Fisher?”

“Because that’s what penguins do. They fish.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, Waddle gazed around at all the other penguins, but they all looked alike to him. So, he yelled out, ‘Fisher!’, but none of the other penguins answered him. Then he went to the edge of the ice and saw a penguin in the water fishing. Waddle asked him, ‘Are you named Fisher?’, but the penguin in the water said, ‘No, I’m just fishing’. Waddle wandered for a long time, but he finally found his friend, and they were both really happy.”

Asher asked, “That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

He wasn’t satisfied, but it was time for him to eat his oatmeal with strawberries and bananas in it.

He begged me for a new and better story after school. I told him about a man who sailed to the South Pole to sell refrigerators to the Waddle and his penguin friends.

Asher didn’t like that story either.

Lanterns in the Night

November 17th, 2025

Asher was excited about going on the lantern walk with the other children from the Waldorf school. He had decorated a glass jar in his kindergarten class to serve as a lamp for the walk at night. He had also learned a song in class that he used to entertain us at home during the days prior to the event. He would spontaneously sing,

“Lanterns in the moonlight, by my side. Soon we will return back home!”

Actually, the lyrics are a bit different, but that’s what he sang, and he sounded really good.

The walk was scheduled for yesterday evening. All day, Asher kept asking us,

“When are we going?”

We answered, “Later, when it gets dark.”

He smiled and said, “This is the best day ever!”

Sunset was at 4:26 yesterday, and my wife, Karin, and I hustled Asher into the car at 4:15 to make the half hour drive to the Tamarack Waldorf School. We got there and saw that other young children were gathering in the parking lot with their caregivers. Faculty members handed out lanterns to the kids (each lantern had the child’s name on it). People mingled and waited for the festivities to start. As the sunset faded, we all moved into the basement of the school to gather for a story and some songs.

The basement was dimly lit with a plethora of lamps and tiny electric candles. The lanterns had these little battery-powered lights in them too. Many years ago, when our own children went on the walk, the lanterns had real candles burning inside of them. That gave the journey a much more old-school feel to it, but the flickering flames on the actual candles tended to go out when it was windy, and darkness once again held sway.

The little kids together in front of the adults on a mat. The 4th grade teacher gave a brief explanation of why the school hosted an annual lantern walk. He told the crowd that the lantern walk tradition went back to the celebration of Martinmas, also known as the Feast of St. Martin of Tours (a holy day on the calendar of the Catholic Church that is celebrated on November 11th). He explained that St. Martin was a wealthy man who shared his cloak with a poor beggar. Martinmas was (and is) about caring for those who are in need. It is also about spreading our inner light in a world that is gradually getting darker, physically and spiritually. The teacher did not go into the religious aspects of the story of St. Martin, which is too bad because those parts are both beautiful and meaningful. However, we live in a diverse secular society and many of the children and parents gathered for the lantern walk do not share Christian beliefs. The teacher was still able to make the purpose of the walk clear: we were going outside with our lanterns to bring light to a world that has grown cold and dark.

Another teacher told a story about “The Lantern King”. It was different tale of a rich man who helped the poor. It reminded me a lot of the story of the Buddha. After that the music teacher led us in song. I liked “Rise up o Flame” It goes:

“Rise up o flame! By thy light glowing, bring to us beauty.

Vision and joy, out of eternity, into this day is born.

Into eternity, it will return.”

Once the singing was done, we filed out of the basement and started walking toward Pulaski Park, a tiny green space a couple blocks from the school. To get to the park we had to walk past Wolski’s Tavern, a landmark on Milwaukee’s lower eastside. The place was doing a brisk business on that evening. It would have been tempting to stop in there for a beer.

Each child’s lantern had handle made of wool fiber. The handles looked great, but they lacked tensile strength. The handles tore loose on several of the lanterns. Asher’s lantern was one of those.

Asher was extremely upset that the strap was broken on his lantern. Karin tried to repair it, but that just infuriated Asher because we were falling behind the rest of the group. He shouted,

“I want to catch up! I don’t want to be the last ones!”

He darted across the dark street, and I yelled at him for doing it,

“DON’T DO THAT! If you do it again, I’ll be really pissed off!”

Karin fixed the handle, but Asher didn’t want it anymore.

He cried, “Give it to somebody else!”

She did.

We caught up with the crowd of lantern bearers. They had formed a large circle in the green space. Then they all began singing. Being as we were in the city, our small lanterns did not produce much extra light, but they made a difference, and that’s all anyone can do.

After the songs, we all slowly left the park to return to the school. The woman who led the people back to Tamarack sang about “Lanterns in the Moonlight”. Asher softly sang along. He was tired and frustrated. He thought there would have been games or other fun things to do. He told me,

“I don’t want to go to the lantern walk again. All I could do was sing!”

True.

We came home and Asher ate some snacks. A popsicle made his mood a bit better. I read for a while and went to bed.

Asher came into the bed later. He didn’t doze off immediately. He wanted to chat. He looked up at the stars that shown through the skylight and asked me about them.

He said, “Are they little circles in the sky?”

I answered, “The stars are like the sun, but really far away.”

He replied, “So, they are circles.”

“Yeah.”

Then he laid his head on my shoulder. He grew quiet and sang the school’s morning verse to himself,

“Morning has come, night is away. We rise with the sun and welcome the day.”

He paused. Then he sang the verse again. I sang it with him.

He has a lovely voice.