Cap'nSacto
Member
- Location
- Sacramento, Calif
My grandkids (6 and 8 yrs old) come to visit me two weekends a month, usually, and often stay overnight and until after dinner the following day. They have befriended two kids that live across the street, and they all play nicely together for 3 or 4 hours at a time. They’ve always played at my place because my yard is fenced. Now that it’s cooling off, they sometimes play indoors, and I have no problem with that. The boys play with cars and these battling spinning tops called bey-blades, and the girls usually play with my granddaughter’s dolls and a fold-away dollhouse that I keep here for her.
That’s what they were doing this past weekend, just outside my office - in a hall that, in this old house, is more a fairly good-sized room than your standard hallway - so I was in earshot when my granddaughter asked her little girlfriend if she had any dolls she could bring over (because, apparently, 12 dolls is not enough dolls).
I heard the little boy say, “Our dad threw all her dolls away.” So, my granddaughter asked why. And the boy said, “Because their eyes were staring at him and he didn’t like it.”
While I’m suddenly sitting bolt-upright, telling myself that a man who throws his daughter’s dolls away because he thinks the dolls are staring at him is mentally ill, the little neighbor girl asks my granddaughter if they can go play at their house. I yelled out “No!” before my granddaughter even had time to complete turning her head my way to ask permission.
I let the neighbor kids stay and play that day until dinner time. My g-kids will want to play with them again, probably every time they visit me. They are good kids, very polite and nice. But now I think their father is crazy. And now I’m noticing that the boy has facial tics, and the girl scares easily - twice she has gasped and jumped, her eyes big as saucers, when I’ve stepped out into the hall on my way to the kitchen. And I’ve noticed these kids are extremely thin, and kind of timid.
Everything else about them seems normal. Except, I don’t know, maybe they’re too polite and too nice. When they come over, they bring little gifts and BFF notes for my g-kids. As far as I can tell, they have no other friends, so to me, it seems like they bring these gifts to sort of build a strong bond with my g-kids.
I don’t know what to make of this thing with the father and the dolls. It freaks me out. And I guess I’m trying to figure out if these two neighbor kids are really ok, or if they need help. The only thing I’m sure of is that my g-kids will not be playing over there. They and their friends will play here.
That’s what they were doing this past weekend, just outside my office - in a hall that, in this old house, is more a fairly good-sized room than your standard hallway - so I was in earshot when my granddaughter asked her little girlfriend if she had any dolls she could bring over (because, apparently, 12 dolls is not enough dolls).
I heard the little boy say, “Our dad threw all her dolls away.” So, my granddaughter asked why. And the boy said, “Because their eyes were staring at him and he didn’t like it.”
While I’m suddenly sitting bolt-upright, telling myself that a man who throws his daughter’s dolls away because he thinks the dolls are staring at him is mentally ill, the little neighbor girl asks my granddaughter if they can go play at their house. I yelled out “No!” before my granddaughter even had time to complete turning her head my way to ask permission.
I let the neighbor kids stay and play that day until dinner time. My g-kids will want to play with them again, probably every time they visit me. They are good kids, very polite and nice. But now I think their father is crazy. And now I’m noticing that the boy has facial tics, and the girl scares easily - twice she has gasped and jumped, her eyes big as saucers, when I’ve stepped out into the hall on my way to the kitchen. And I’ve noticed these kids are extremely thin, and kind of timid.
Everything else about them seems normal. Except, I don’t know, maybe they’re too polite and too nice. When they come over, they bring little gifts and BFF notes for my g-kids. As far as I can tell, they have no other friends, so to me, it seems like they bring these gifts to sort of build a strong bond with my g-kids.
I don’t know what to make of this thing with the father and the dolls. It freaks me out. And I guess I’m trying to figure out if these two neighbor kids are really ok, or if they need help. The only thing I’m sure of is that my g-kids will not be playing over there. They and their friends will play here.
