Play can be so challenging

When I started blogging I was fairly anonymous.  I have shared the hardest parts of our lives, the freak accidents, the weird stories.  Life is an adventure and a journey for us and I share it.  I am not anonymous any more.  I know you may read this and then look me in the eye.  It is ok.  This is our journey!  Welcome to it... it is my life, it is exciting, it is hard and I invite you in. 

There are days when being a mom is incredibly hard, challenging and unforgiving.  I have been having my share of these days!  Last summer we faced trouble with classmates and neighbor kids. It was so randomly terrible to play with anyone that we had a backyard rule.  Then we met some great folks that we had some good times with who understood our kind of life!  He started school and did amazing at being a good friend.  The last 7 months we have seen giant changes in Espen's behavior and ability to play with children.  We have seen a huge increase in his desire to play and try.  And we have allowed him the opportunity to try. 

Yet here we are getting ready for summer and we already have concerns.  Concerns about who he plays with, the appropriateness of the parents, the age of the children.  It has been a challenging week.  After a complete accident I had to remove my child from the neighbors yard while listening to a child accuse him of being terrible.  I have had to defend rumors of him being a bully.  I have had to explain to him bully and mean and why he should not call himself these things. 

We had to put summer rules in place already....We won't be playing with the big kids who ride bikes in the street without helmets and traipse around the neighborhood unattended.  We won't be playing with children whose parents use horrible language around my son (he repeats it).  We won't be playing with kids who are continually mean.  We won't be off unsupervised all over the neighborhood.  It makes my summer hard because I have to always be that mom who says no we can't play, or no we can't go there.  As much as it seems like punishment, it is for the sanity of our family. 

And it starts already.