My five-year-old son has had the same best friend since nursery school, a lovely little boy I?ll call Billy.
Ever since the age of three, my son James and Billy have been inseparable. Digging in the sandbox, splashing at the water table, tumbling around the playground like Labradors and shoving peas up their noses at lunchtime?regular little-kid stuff.
So when they ended up in the same kindergarten class, I was delighted. And every was great until one day, James came home complaining that Billy had been put into a ?special group? and they couldn?t sit together anymore during reading class. I immediately worried about about Billy. The boys are the youngest in the class, and Billy’s even younger than James. Was he falling behind" Worse yet, would he be held back" The next time Billy and James had a playdate, my fears were put to rest.
?Hi, James?s mum!? said Billy with his signature twinkly smile. ?Did you know that the Marianna Trench is the deepest part of the sea" It?s located in the Western Pacific Ocean and is seven miles deep. Only four submarines have ever been to the bottom in all of human history!?
Billy?s mother rolled her eyes and switched off the TV, which had been playing David Attenborough?s Blue Planet. ?Sorry,? she said. ?He watches these things obsessively lately. It gets a little boring.?
?And also did you know,? continued Billy, now in full flow, ?the narwhal is a whale that has a long tusk like a unicorn lives in the Arctic ocean near ...