Choose Your Friends the Way You Choose Your Shoes

February 20, 2013

My father loved to use quotes, sayings, and metaphors to make a point. My siblings and I still use his examples when we talk to each other. One of his favorites was “Choose your friends the way you choose your shoes.” The gist was that we had to walk with them and if they weren’t a good fit it would be uncomfortable. Just as a pair of bad shoes produces a weird gait, choosing peers that were a poor fit would also create a walk we might not be happy with.

While I usually understood what my Dad was getting at – these wisdom nuggets do not work well at all with my own children. They are quite literal because of their Asperger Syndrome, so the idea of comparing friends to shoes confuses them and, to be honest, they don’t really like ANY shoes. Making the literal translation, they would assume I wanted them to have no friends.

This friendship thing is a really big deal for kids like mine. It can be hard for them to discern the real deal. They need help patching together which peers are their true friends and which ones are just boys they take a class with or who may happen to be around us frequently.

I have had much more success using real life examples. If I can incorporate the things they love when I am attempting to illustrate life’s important lessons, I have far better success. A best choice is always our cats. The boys cannot resist them. When a cat comes into the room they will stop whatever they are doing and all of their attention is directed at the animal.

Last week I had the opportunity to use this feline fascination to illustrate my father’s friendship concept and I seized it.

To briefly set the stage – We have had our little girl cat for two and a half years and for all of this time she has been rather shy. She would not allow the children to hold her and she would hide whenever we had company. I was the only person she was affectionate toward, and she was very attached to me.

Then, late last summer, we added a new boy cat to our family. Since he arrived I have had so many great opportunities to use his interaction with the girl to teach my guys important lessons about friendship. In fact, October’s column was all about their introduction to one another. It was rough at first, but they eventually became fast friends. He is a bigger cat and quite a bit older, but it appears that she is rather infatuated with him.

As we watched the two of them playing one afternoon the boys mentioned how happy they were that the little girl comes out more often now. That was my opening, and I took it. I asked them if they noticed how many other ways she had changed since we adopted the boy. They admitted that she is really different now.

Some of the changes are good – she is far more sociable, and even lets them pet her sometimes. She naps with her new friend instead of hiding away. She is playful and enjoys the companionship that this fellow offers.

Of course, there have been some less desirable changes as well. This boy likes to beg for treats. Suddenly, the same cat that used to turn her nose up at treats also begs for them. Loudly and often. The dear girl is also a pesky little sister. A huge fan of the games that they play, she will wake him from naps and provoke him until he chases after her. She has begun jumping up on things in order to gain “the high ground’ during their sessions of Cat Olympics and when she can’t find him she cries out in a plaintiff wail until he appears.

After going over the list it was easy for my sons to see that the new boy was the catalyst for all of these changes. That was when I changed course and brought up the fact that who we choose as our peers or our partners can affect our behavior, too. Sometimes it is good, other times it might not be. We talked about some of the kids we know and which behaviors the boys have picked up from them. It made it a little bit easier to see which ones were friends, and which ones were probably not.

I think that the next time my furry friends beg for treats I will give them a few extra.