ERAPA

Today we went to the Home Ed group by bus, which was fine; interesting, but fine. We rode upstairs and Linnea hugely enjoyed looking out the windows. She was also extremely good about coming carefully down the stairs to disembark.

When we got there, Linnea seemed mainly to want to play on her own, for most of three hours. She did intermittently try playing with other people but she spent a lot of time sitting with a group if children reading to herself, or playing alone in the sandpit outside. That was fine; I spent a lot of time sitting listening to other peoples' conversations and drinking tea.

It was interesting though, because many people assume that the reason I go to this group is to provide Linnea with a social group, much the way nurseries and preschools do for other children. And that's broadly true, but it's access to a social group I'm providing. I want her to choose whether or not, and when, to socialise. And with whom, from a hopefully broad range of people. She doesn't get on well with the large group activities such as Storytime, or Singing, or whatever; we've even stopped going to the library's Rhyme Time sessions entirely because Linnea actively dislikes them half the time. She almost never sits through the story and song at Tigglers Togglers. Group behaviour appears not to be her thing.

But oh, does she like people or what! She loves them all. She hates leaving them. She remembers them and talks about them after they're gone, or we're gone, or whatever. She just... likes to be able to choose whether or not to interact with them. On her own terms.

My goodness me, I appear to have produced my daughter.

(More elsewhere, perhaps, on tomorrow's Social Dilemma).