[email protected]

During our stay in Hawaii in the last two months, we met a wonderful family and instantly felt connected. They are homeschooling Dad and daughter Eileen who is 10 years old.

We spent lots of time together, almost 4-5 days a week playing, doing lego workshop together and other activities. Both my son Orion (7) and daugther Makena (4) are very attached to Eileen. They got along really well. Orion claimed she was his girlfriend. Sometimes we adults half jokingly referred them as boyfriend and girlfriend. Later I felt it might not be a good idea so I just used dear friend instead of boyfriend/girlfriend.

Now we left Maui three days ago. Both kids (Orion and Eileen) missed each other and cried. Orion still talked about Eileen. My daughter Makena (4) mentioned Eileen a couple of times but she is already moving on and being apart from Eileen doesn't seem to matter to her.

My questions are:

1. Is it a good idea to refer them as boyfriend/girlfriend?

2. Should I try to discourage or facilitate the friendship?

reasons for discouraging the friendship:
We may not see them until a year later
Being attached to his friend, Orion seems sad being apart.
I could help him to move on and get on with his life by downplaying (not mentioning or not doing much)

Reasons for facilitating the friendship and ways of doing it:
I could facilitate them to visit us in Dallas in 2-3 months. It may not be feasible but I can try or work really hard to make it happen. But what after? it will still be long distance friendship.

I could set up skype, facetime, minecraft server, sending postcard, texting...keeping online connection. But my son doesn't seem to like this kind of interaction. He doesn't even like phone conversation. When they were together, they played tag games, role played with lego and minecraft...being present with each other was the key component of the friendship.

I feel this online connection may frustrate him more...

Since we travel and move around a lot, I think as they get older maintaining friendship will be something I need to work on.

I am not sure if I am asking the right questions. I would appreciate your input. My mind is not very clear feeling torn with different directions.

Thank you for reading

Jihong

BRIAN POLIKOWSKY

I have dear friends I have not seen in years....some live in other countries.
I am thankful there is Facebook and Skype so I can keep in touch!
This last May at the ALL Unschooling Minnesota Symposium there was a group of teens that come to meet and they were all from different states and best friends that game together. It was super cool to see them together. 
Alex Polikowsky






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Randi Lee

Hi Jihong,

here's my two cents:

- I don't think it was a good idea to referred them as boyfriend/girlfriend. But if you and her dad did out loud infront of them then I will suggested to clarified as friend who is a boy can referred as boy-friend, and same to explain for girlfriend term.

- I would not discourage for many reasons. 1) that is part of life - we meet and sometime be apart temporary or/and permanetly. So discouraging will seems as if feel hurt or sad, we should delete it. 2) because of you guys move alot it will keep on happening until you settle in one place, therefore there's a need to deal with such feelings, and now as opportunity present. 3) also will make matter worse in ways like - scar from missing a friend feeling unsolved or afraid to meet others to avoid this kind of feeling.

-when it comes to talk about seeing them, becareful not to make empty promises. And at the same time can't consider never see them again. So I would explain about the possiblities and what involves appropriately for him/them to comprehend.

Of course it's based on what took place in my family and our experience.

HTH,
randi

 






________________________________
From: "whatismyusername@..." <whatismyusername@...>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, August 1, 2013 2:22 PM
Subject: [AlwaysLearning] friendship/girlfriend/long distance friendship



 
During our stay in Hawaii in the last two months, we met a wonderful family and instantly felt connected. They are homeschooling Dad and daughter Eileen who is 10 years old.

We spent lots of time together, almost 4-5 days a week playing, doing lego workshop together and other activities. Both my son Orion (7) and daugther Makena (4) are very attached to Eileen. They got along really well. Orion claimed she was his girlfriend. Sometimes we adults half jokingly referred them as boyfriend and girlfriend. Later I felt it might not be a good idea so I just used dear friend instead of boyfriend/girlfriend.

Now we left Maui three days ago. Both kids (Orion and Eileen) missed each other and cried. Orion still talked about Eileen. My daughter Makena (4) mentioned Eileen a couple of times but she is already moving on and being apart from Eileen doesn't seem to matter to her.

My questions are:

1. Is it a good idea to refer them as boyfriend/girlfriend?

2. Should I try to discourage or facilitate the friendship?

reasons for discouraging the friendship:
We may not see them until a year later
Being attached to his friend, Orion seems sad being apart.
I could help him to move on and get on with his life by downplaying (not mentioning or not doing much)

Reasons for facilitating the friendship and ways of doing it:
I could facilitate them to visit us in Dallas in 2-3 months. It may not be feasible but I can try or work really hard to make it happen. But what after? it will still be long distance friendship.

I could set up skype, facetime, minecraft server, sending postcard, texting...keeping online connection. But my son doesn't seem to like this kind of interaction. He doesn't even like phone conversation. When they were together, they played tag games, role played with lego and minecraft...being present with each other was the key component of the friendship.

I feel this online connection may frustrate him more...

Since we travel and move around a lot, I think as they get older maintaining friendship will be something I need to work on.

I am not sure if I am asking the right questions. I would appreciate your input. My mind is not very clear feeling torn with different directions.

Thank you for reading

Jihong




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Jenny Cyphers

"My questions are:

1. Is it a good idea to refer them as boyfriend/girlfriend? 

2. Should I try to discourage or facilitate the friendship?"


What's interesting to me about this, is that my daughter had a very similar relationship, but as the older girl.  So, I can say from the perspective of the mother of a girl who was older than the boy, I would NOT refer to them as boyfriend/girlfriend.  The boy may find nothing wrong with it, but the girl, at least my girl would have been embarrassed by this.  It's also likely she wouldn't have said anything.

As far as helping them be friends, sure, nothing wrong with that.  I can only tell you the perspective of what that looked liked for us.  While the kids had a great time playing together and loved being together, it wasn't a relationship that my daughter asked for or sought after.  Sure, he was a friend and sure, she enjoyed spending time with him, but she didn't ask to do so.  The asking was always on their end and my own daughter happily complied with this request because they had fun.  

Eventually they grew apart.  He got more friends that were closer to his age and mostly boys and she moved on into tween and teen years and never really gave it much thought.  I ran into that family about 6 months ago and the boy remembers playing with my daughter quite well and fondly.  I came home and told my daughter about it and she laughed and remembered him fondly as well.  There was no attempt to reconnect, but I got to hear some great stories from my daughter of that friendship, that I never knew.

That's the gist of it but I'll tell one of the stories because it's cute and I passed it on to the mom and she thought so as well.

One of the things they did above anything else was to play Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh.  His favorite was Yu-gi-oh so Chamille would generally do that since he was younger and she didn't care as much as he did.  He couldn't read.  She didn't have a lot of those cards.  When they played, he split up his cards so they could each play, but he would keep all the best cards for himself so that the game was stacked in his favor.  What she did, was tell him, what each card did since he couldn't read.  She made stuff up since she knew he'd stacked the deck.  Basically they were both cheating to win but it didn't seem to bother either one of them.


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