h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Since little went to a half term play club a couple of weeks ago, he has been phoning a girl every evening. It's lucky that I have one of those call schemes that just costs a connection charge and the actual call is free. He's seen her at other play schemes - at least three different ones, so he insists it's not a new friendship. Anyway, she's coming to stay overnight next Saturday. I've only seen her once - at the playclub - and they were sitting next to each other, heads inclined together, thick as thieves.

It may be just a friendship. He's certainly quite a young 10.

Ah, young love perhaps, ZSF.

My little also went through a couple of these experiences early on.

I'd like to say it prepared him for things to come, but I don't think much of value was gained. He was still destined to go through a couple of rough bits, and even now is not entirely comfortable in all paired relationships.

Good luck to little . He at least sounds like he may develop this into a long-term - even liftime - friendship; probably healthier, safer, and more satisfying than trying to make of it a life-long love bond at this point.

It concerns me a little that he's so keen, Fords . She has said before that she would ring him back and she hasn't, so perhaps she's not so keen. Still, it's obviously part of growing up and it will be a learning experience. Part of me thinks it's quite sweet.

It's when you bump into strange girls in the bathroom in the morning that you should start worrying.

In fact, I never got a chance to worry about that really. Watch "Love Actually" - there's a 10-year-old boy in that who is totally smitten with a girl at school. Once his (step-)father (played by Liam Neeson) understands how serious it is, he helps him get together with her. I don't know how much research (or his own memory) Richard Curtis actually used when writing that bit, but I think I remember him saying in an interview that he first fell in love at the age of four. Why shouldn't kids be capable of strong feelings? It's a good and healthy sign.

I hope, too for little that it will be a nice friendship. It can't do any harm to spend some time with a girl; he hasn't a sister, so this is a chance he is lucky to have. Just stand back and let them get on with it, I would.

Oh, I'm not putting obstacles in the way, TC. I've been doing the dialing for him on the cordless phone so that he can be private if he wants - doesn't make that much difference - he's so loud, I can hear him from the next room, although often he doesn't go out of the room. He seems to do most of the talking. Oh yes! I remember that bit from 'Love Actually'. I'd forgotten it. It's good that he doesn't see girls as alien life-forms. I think it's because she goes to a different school that he's so keen to stay in touch. If she went to his school, there probably wouldn't be such urgency.

I'm probably being over-protective, worrying about him getting hurt. He can be very sensitive. I remember when he came home once saying that nobody liked him. I told him I liked him - "You don't count". I said his teacher liked him. Same response - and so on through his circle of friends. It turned out that a boy in year 6 didn't like him (who sounds to have been the antithesis of little - much older and very physical - a bit of a bully). Poor thing - he thought the whole world should like him. I remember going through similar experiences at junior school. At least he can discuss this with Roy and I. I couldn't talk to my mother about this.

I see your point. But at some point he may well get hurt and will have to learn to live with it. I was probably protected from this sort of thing too much by my parents, too, and still have trouble coping with it to this day.

Perhaps I would have the same trouble even if I hadn't been protected and had suffered rejection in early years. Who knows?

'Perhaps I would have the same trouble even if I hadn't been protected and had suffered rejection in early years. Who knows?' I too found rejection very difficult when I was a child, TC. I suspect that it comes either from something that's inbuilt, or because I wasn't taught how to be more hard-nosed. We're trying to get little more used to dealing with criticism and rejection. Roy calls it 'horse training'. It does seem to help at some level, but he still gets very upset at things which happen at school (being out of favour with some friend or other).