new friend!

i have a new friend. this guy:
he's pretty adorable. [his mom is chinese and his dad is from the US.] i guess we've been friends for a little while, but we are better friends now. becoming friends was not easy. he's the kind of guy that generally only has a few friends that he's ok with and will hang out with. when he was younger, before he could walk, i would try to hang out with him, take him from his mom so she could do other things. he would cry every single minute no matter what, whether we were near his mom or she was out of sight. one day when he was a bit older i actually held him once without him being upset. finally i babysat him and his brothers actually at their house, and he was somehow ok with that. he fell asleep *in my arms* (he was crying before that...but still!!). that is really pretty amazing. now that he is older and is saying just a couple words, but can understand a lot more, i find it easier to make friends, maybe since it isn't necessary to hold him. i can hang out with him by walking around with him and noticing the things he notices, and talking to him. i like to explain things to him rather than just tell him "no" and i stopped trying to pick him up. somehow, these things work pretty well. and i realize i used to do these things with other friends i had his age in the US. for example, i will tell him, "we can't touch that because it belongs to someone else," and he will actually listen to me. and i let him touch other stuff instead. or i'll tell him, "oh you can hold that, but you can't eat it," and he gets it (and then if he tries to eat it, i'm justified in taking it away from him and he knows there is a reason why). or when he starts pointing up to every light he sees (there are a lot in china) and yelling, "light!!" i join in with him. i let him do everything on his own, unless he asks for help or if he might fall, then i stay much more closely with him. eventually he *asked* to be picked up, when we were walking around and he was tired of walking. i asked him where we should go, and he pointed, and then he said, "mom!" so we looked for her.

anyway, i think it's interesting. because normally in life when you make friends with people, you don't try to force them into physical contact with you or just tell them you don't want them to do something without explaining why, nor do we let our friends walk all over us and do whatever they want (you would hope). we try to see things from our friends' perspective, and hopefully not be someone's friend just to get something from them. yet we do this with little kids all the time--expect to be able to hold them immediately, expect them to be ok with hearing "no" over and over again with no explanation, expect them to want to give us kisses and hugs because it's cute. but no, with kids you have to earn trust too, just like with anyone else. and even the ones who can't really talk yet seem to appreciate being talked to in a non-baby-ish way--of course, not the same way you would talk to an adult, but talking about real things, things that are important to them, not just cutesy baby talk. i think it's fun to try to make friends with toddlers (and then give them back to their parents! haha). and it does take persistence, to win their actual trust and friendship, just like it does with adults too. i think adults give up on each other way too easily. i didn't give up on this guy even when he originally rejected me over and over again. now he will run up to me smiling. why do i give up on pursuing friendships with other people?