Afternoon at the park

Yesterday was unseasonably cool for an August afternoon in the Central valley, so I decided it was a good day to make Nathan walk to the park. I told him we were going to walk, not take the stroller, and he heard that and headed for the door. The park is about 2 blocks away, and Nathan is capable of walking 2 blocks, but capable and motivated are 2 different things! Holding his hand and singing, we got there. I told Nathan he could choose what he wanted to do (swings, slide, etc), and he ended up wanting to sit and play with somebody's bike helmet. Somebody ended up being an 11 year old girl we'd never met before. Luckily she was very nice about it. Her stepbrother came over and watched Nathan dangle the helmet around by its straps. "He's kinda creepy." he told me. This turned out to be because of the way he was playing with a bike helmet instead of on the playground equipment. However, this boy was not to be outdone by his sister, so he offered Nathan his new, shiny bike helmet to play with. Nathan preferred the old one. Then the boy wanted to know if Nathan could ride the scooter. "He's not ready to do that yet," I told him. The boy told me he thought he could do it at 2 or 3 and asked how old Nathan was. "Well, he's 3, but his balance isn't as good as yours was when you were 3. He has Down Syndrome and so he learns things more slowly". "Oh, so he's kinda... mental." Um. Well. How to respond? There was just no malice in this. He was trying to understand. I believe he was also trying NOT to say the retarded part of mentally retarded, and that left "mental". I named a boy who attends the same school as this boy who has Down Syndrome, and explained that this is the same condition Nathan has. He didn't know that boy but named some others. I, of course, didn't know the others, so I have no idea what kind of disabilities we were talking about at that point, but there seemed to be some sort of general knowledge about kids with special needs and that Nathan was one of them. Good enough. He played catch with Nathan with his basketball a bit, then we watched while he shot hoops. Nathan really loves to watch people play basketball, so this was great fun for him.
After all of that, I asked Nathan about the playground again. With help, he climbed the stairs and did the big slide, twice. He explored the structure. He did the big swings, the bouncy turtle, the little swings.




And then we walked home, hand in hand, singing. We'd been at the park about 2 1/2 hours! Nathan was pretty hot and thirsty. He used his new straw skills to suck down a cold smoothie... and then a second one!