Yesterday was a horrible day. Horrible. Terrible. Awful. Rotten. Smelly. Stinky. Crappy. Bad. It was a bad day.

Allow me to introduce to you a child that Little Man almost never gets along with. Even when they were babies, they didn’t get along. From the minute they were both mobile, Little Man and this other boy have butted heads. Over everything. The problem lies in the fact that Biff’s mom and myself are good friends. Otherwise, I would long ago have given up on this relationship and stopped forcing my son to try to “get along.”

Let’s name this boy, shall we? Hmmm…. Let’s call him Biff. Biff, meet Blogiverse. Blogiverse, meet Biff. Ok, that’s done.

When Little Man and Biff were toddlers, Biff would make a game out of bullying the shit out of LM. Fun, no? Well not exactly. Biff would see that Little Man was happily sitting and playing and make it his goal to end Little Man’s fun. He’d dart across the room toward LM, his antennae buzzing, and say, “I.Want.That,” swiftly, and surprisingly strongly for such a little person, ripping whatever toy LM happened to be holding out of his hands. Little Man, in turn, would immediately crumble into a ball of offended, hurt, pissed-off tears and snot. Every time.

I’ll confess it right now: At times, I’ve yanked things back out of Biff’s hands and tried to console Little Man with the fact that Mommy came to the rescue. At other times, I’ve told Little Man to tell Biff to”Back Off!” Not my prouder moments, to be sure, but what the hell. The facts are the facts.

As the two boys have grown (they are 4 months apart in age, Little Man being the elder of the two), the situation hasn’t changed a whole lot. I don’t want this to seem entirely one-sided, but there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind whose side I’m taking, right? Biff still takes toys from Little Man’s hands when he wants them (without asking), and Little Man still gets upset about the fact that Biff is such a little opportunistic beast boy.

I’ve tried, over the past two years, to limit their interaction, but it’s hard. They’re always being thrown together. Us moms are good friends, we go to the same church, and eventually they’ll go to the same school and be in the same class. Eventually.

The biggest problem, for me, is that Little Man’s behaviour around Biff is now horrible. He starts talking before a playdate about the fact that Biff will probably take things from him, he is anxious and grumpy the whole time we’re with Biff, and he talks for days afterward about all the ways that Biff has wronged him. It’s awful.

Yesterday we had Biff and his sister and mom over for a playdate. It had been weeks since we last saw them. I tried to prepare Little Man ahead of time, telling him that if there were any toys he didn’t want to share, he should put them away. I talked to him about sharing, because, let’s face it, Little Man is an only child and isn’t forced to share as much as kids who have siblings. Little Man, as a result of this, is not always good at sharing, but we talk about it a lot and I try to model sharing behaviour with him, but oftentimes it still falls short and playdates can be miserable.

Especially with Biff. Especially yesterday. Little Man was having nothing to do with sharing, he was sulky and he was miserable. Thus, I was miserable.

I can think up many ways to explain Little Man’s rotten behaviour. For example, he’s got SPD and he gets overstimulated when there is too much going on. Maybe he’d be better off with a one-on-one playdate that doesn’t involve Biff’s sibling? Also, maybe Little Man has become so used to Biff’s nastiness that he has come to the point where he’s always thinking ahead, anticipating the worst (toys being ripped from his hands), therefore pre-empting Biff’s nastiness with a dose of his own medicine. I don’t know.

I worry that I’m just making excuses for my kid being bad at sharing and being an overall grumpy person.

But then I’m remind of all the playdates that have gone well with kids whose company Little Man really enjoys. We had a playdate last Monday with some friends we hadn’t seen for a long time, and LM did great! He and the two girls (aged 6 and 8 ) played here in our house (with his toys that he had no problem sharing) for FIVE HOURS with no conflict. None. So he can share.

Yesterday his behaviour with Biff was so dreadful, so embarrassing, that for a minute or five,  I seriously considered letting that friendship fall by the wayside as much as it can. Like I said, there’s church and eventually school, but those are controlled environments where both boys (hopefully) can make friends whose company they enjoy and not have so much direct contact.

There’s a chance that Biff and his family will be moving to another part of the province in the next year. Maybe I should just hope for that…

Ugh.

There’s another issue regarding playdates that I need to approach too. Little Man is terrified by babies and toddlers. If you’re a kid and you can’t speak in sentences, then Little Man is afraid of you. But that’s another story………………..

Basically, yesterday I felt like this:

     …minus the propeller-clad penis, of course.