Between Friends

The journey of social learning continues for Bilaal... When we were down in Cape Town for the holidays he had a feast of social opportunities with friends and cousins. Now he and my cousins son enjoy each others company for the most part, except for the teasing. See my cousins son keeps telling Bilaal he's a baby, you know in that wela kabela sing-song tune. Bilaal didn't know how to handle this except to keep shouting "I'm not!". After the first encounter it bothered him quite a bit so we talked it over and explained to him that it was just teasing and that the best way to handle it is not to let the person teasing you see that it bothers you, and to retaliate with clever responses and not neccessarily to be rude. My mother-in-law role-played the situation with him where she pretended to call him a baby and he would laugh at her at say "so are you!" in a very playful tone. So the next interaction was on the horizon and Bilaal was very excited to put his new skill into practice. He did pretty well, but obviously the teasing is not going to stop immediately... these things take time. The funny thing is the next morning when I told him he did well, he asked me, "but how come when I said 'so are you' it didn't work?"
So I asked him, "What do you mean? What did you expect to happen?"
To which he replied, "I expected him to shut down."
I had contain my laughter at his response and explain to him that it would take time but that he did really well and should continue.

So the next time he saw his cousin there was no taunting, but while they were eating his cousin kept telling him to stop talking. Now believe me Bilaal is a real chatterbox, even we are constantly telling him to stop talking when he's eating otherwise it takes him 45 minutes to eat a peanut butter sandwich... believe me I am not exaggerating! So anyway his cousin kept telling him to stop talking to which Bilaal replied, "I don't want to stopt talking, you stop talking."
Cousin: "No you stop talking"
Bilaal: "How come I must stop talking but you can talk?"
Cousin: "Because it's my house"
Bilaal: "No it's not, it's you daddy's house"...

Just a little debate between friends hey!