He and Jay were playing pirates with a boy they met there. At one point, they climbed up a tall structure with a long tube slide. Suddenly, Cole flew out the bottom of the slide on his belly and landed face first in the sand. Poor guy was gagging from all the sand in his nose and mouth and could barely see with sand in his eyes. While I was comforting him, the new friend came over and admitted he had pushed Cole down the slide. When I asked him why, he replied, "A zombie was coming." After mildly scolding the boy (his father was close by, but didn't seem like he was going to do much), we went to the car to get water and wipes.
After a while, Cole asked if we could go back to the park. I was surprised that he still wanted to play. As we walked back across the street, I heard him whispering under his breath. When we got there, he walked right up to the boy.
"Are you still gonna play?" the boy asked.
"Yes," Cole replied. "But I don't want you to push me down the slide unless I say it's ok."
The boy agreed and they continued to run around like crazy pirate boys.
It turns out the muttering I heard was Cole rehearsing what he was going to say to the boy. I'm so proud of the mature way he handled it. Times like this make all the hard work of parenting worthwhile.
(We left when the kid found a discarded plastic golf club and began swinging it at the boys.)
