Gabrielle Ho­sein

When she gets an­gry at Stone or me, Ziya's lat­est re­sponse is to an­nounce that she's not our friend. 'You can be your own friend!' she de­clared be­fore hunch­ing her shoul­ders and stomp­ing off af­ter I quar­reled with her. "Dad­dy is not be­ing my friend," she ac­cused on an­oth­er oc­ca­sion, giv­ing him the look of the wound­ed and be­trayed when she didn't get her way.

Yes, my ba­by is in school, prac­tis­ing the com­plex emo­tions and skills com­pelled by so­cial in­ter­ac­tion. Friend­ship, and all that it means, has clear­ly be­come a huge­ly im­por­tant source of con­nec­tion and ne­go­ti­a­tion.

Every af­ter­noon on our way home, as I ask her about her day, we talk about who she played with at lunchtime and what they did to­geth­er. Young and Rest­less has noth­ing on the tribu­la­tions of this three year old. Some days, some of the girls in­clude her as their friend, some days not. Some days, she says she played by her­self be­cause every­one al­ready had a friend. Some days, she finds some­one else to play with.

In her cir­cles, friend­ships are made and bro­ken, al­liances es­tab­lished and rene­go­ti­at­ed, sides cho­sen and then switched with the vigour of UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil horse-trad­ing over Syr­ia. For­get high school. If you thought that a preschool play­ground was about play, think again.

This is where Zi most fig­ures out who she is, how she should or shouldn't be­have, what feel­ings she should ar­tic­u­late and to whom, and how to sur­vive hurt, heal­ing and tough love, which af­ter all is the way of the world.