My Child Has Egocentrism....What?!?!

I am that mom that calls daycare every day to see how Belle is doing. We only see her teacher in the mornings so I don’t get a full report of everything when we pick her up. When I call her teacher tells me what they did how she’s doing blah blah blah.

Yesterday when I called I wasn’t expecting a report on how my child hasn’t been wanting to play with the other kids for a while now. Her teacher then goes on to tell me how Belle is going through the egocentrism phase. I obviously had to Google once I hung up the phone with her and once I did I immediately began rolling my eyes.

First of all, toddlers her age do not play together, they play next to each other pretty much ignoring each other. Second, it’s not that big of deal that my child can happily play and entertain herself. I am pretty proud that my only child can do that. She doesn’t always need mommy and daddy there to entertain her. And third, we have witnessed numerous times in the last few weeks how well our child plays with other kids. She plays wonderfully with the little girl across the street who is her age. She loves her cousins and plays great with them. And, at the splash pad in our neighborhood she plays with the kids there, following them, copying them, and running with them.

I guess the problem (if you can really say there is a problem) is that she doesn’t even let kids play near her. She tells them no and puts her hand up for them to go away. She doesn’t share toys very well at school, but at home she is really good with sharing. She is always giving mommy or daddy her toys. And when she wants one back we make sure she says please and thank you. At her age no kid is good with sharing but we are working on it so she isn’t so nasty about it. I believe she learned the whole “mine” thing from The Bug.

I am in no way concerned or worried. It’s typical toddler behavior and we correct her the best we can with sharing. We have seen her play with other kids a lot to in no way be concerned. It just bugged me that her teacher who we really like felt like she had to bring this up like we are doing something wrong and should be correcting this. Seriously she’s fine, can we please work on the talking and not worry so much about her wanting to play be herself? She has words and a lot that just is not English. When we work with her on words she can’t even repeat them. She thinks she is but they are nowhere near what they should be sounding like. Let’s work on that and leave her playing habits alone ok?