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Subscribe to RSSMy 5-year-old son and I were walking to the kitchen that November night for a snack. “Something happened, Mom,” he said. I looked back at Sam, thinking maybe he’d dropped his Matchbox car, or his pajama bottoms had fallen down.
Diana Sugg
Sam+Emma. True love... in kindergarten? Don't laugh, the experts say, their feelings are real.
Instead, he stopped and looked at me for a moment. An impish smile spread across his face. “I fell in love,” he announced. “I’m in love with Emma.”
I didn’t know what to say. For weeks, Sam had been bringing up his classmate Emma. They’d been playing and hugging and having a grand time. My husband and I laughed and thought it was adorable.
But was it love? How could it be? They were only in kindergarten.
In fact, experts say, age 5 or 6 is the moment when romantic love first arrives. Boys and girls begin to notice each other. They develop loyalties. They start to share secrets.
“These are really strong feelings that kids actually have,” said Dr. Barbara Howard, a nationally known developmental behavioral pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “They really do love each other.”
Sam and Emma both have big imaginations and lots of creativity. They’d hit it off during recess, digging for dinosaur fossils in the sandbox, and running across the field, searching the sky for hawks.
Diana Sugg
Emma made this card for Sam, her kindergarten sweetheart.
Kindergarten is the moment when kids are in school full-time, and moving away from their primary caregiver. It’s natural and healthy to attach to another person for comfort and security, said Dr. Joyce Harrison, director of preschool psychiatry programs at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.
Children also start trying out adult roles. As kindergartners, they realize they’re in the big school and think they’re supposed to act like a grown-up, said Harrison. “It’s all a part of sorting out, ‘Who am I, and what am I supposed to do?’” she said.
Some boys propose to girls. My sister got a cigar band from her classmate. A friend’s aunt actually had a boy in her kindergarten bring in his mother’s two-carat diamond engagement ring. Honored, the girl wore it on her thumb all day.
But this role-playing is often more than play. Parents and teachers shouldn’t laugh at it – or make it into a big deal. These are genuine feelings that should be respected and accepted.
Because it’s also an age when children are naturally curious about their bodies, Howard noted that parents should supervise these kids, because sometimes they want to know how girls’ and boys’ bodies are different.
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But rarely does anything need to be done about these relationships. They run their course. Just when things seem to be getting too intense, teachers and doctors say, interests change. Usually, by first and second grade, boys just want to be with the boys, and girls want to play with girls.
For now, Emma and Sam have decided they’re going to get married. They’ve practiced their wedding dance. They’ve named their five children. More importantly, they have fun, and they watch out for each other. She makes him cards; he brings her the water bottle she left behind.
When Sam first told me, I think I mumbled a few comments. Mostly, I tried to say it was nice.
Now, seeing them together, knowing that he wants me to pick him up later each school day – so he can savor just a few more minutes sitting next to Emma – I find myself smiling. And I think to myself, “Good for Sam.” He’s lucky to have this special friend.
The other day, when Sam was getting a ride with Emma and her father, I bent inside the car to hug him good-bye. I noticed that Sam and Emma, each in a car seat, had stretched out their arms toward each other. They were holding hands over the empty space between them.
When I looked into Sam’s face, it was lit from within, with excitement, with happiness, with something I’d never seen before. Dare I say it? Love.
Diana K. Sugg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has covered medicine, crime and other issues for newspapers around the country. She is now a freelance writer in Baltimore raising two young sons.
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Leave a Comment:
My son was "engaged" when he was four, and our daughter when she was two!! Too bad those relationships didn't last (the kids are 18 & 20 now), my husband and I really liked both sets of in-laws!
I just have to say, this article was pretty adorable. :)
I know someone who married their kindergarten sweetheart and they've been married 60 years.
I think that is sooooo cool!
No you don't.
Married the girl I met in Jr High
My mother knows a couple who started dating in kindergarden and are still together, happily married more than 20yrs.
May 12th 2012 will be marrying the boy I fell in love with when I was 5.
Really? That is fabulous!
How wonderful that I will be able to enjoy watching my children engaged in such a Magical emotion as love. I hope it will last for ever. Awsome article.
Long story cut really short. When I was in Kindergarten, I fell in love with a girl Dana. I told her mom one day that I was going to marry her. We ended up in different schools and never kept in contact. When I went to high school, we were in the same class. We became best friends, and started dating in 9th grade. I kept my promise I made in Kindergarten and we got married in 2009.
You don't think it’s destiny? Well, we were born 2 days apart and we were in the SAME hospital when we were born. I picked her out when I was 2 days old. Proceed with your Aww'ing :)
Awwwww!
f**k you.
rofl Stinkleton
Good one Stinkleton, you had me rofl, you are just terrible
Stinkleton, you're suspended for a day for violating #1 of the Code of Honor.
...if you had written '@!$%# that', I probably wouldn't have restored it, but I also wouldn't be suspending you. Don't self-censor - you can turn off the profanity filter here.
Fair enough, Tyler, my pet. Fair enough.
My now 7 year old, back when he was in kindergarten asked if he could move to a new class. "Don't like your class?" "Yes mommy, but I've got all the girlfriends there and I want more."
You've been warned.
This isn't as touching as some of the responses, but when I had a girlfriend in kindergarten I asked my mom a favor. I wanted to bring her to the house for milk and cookies I guess and to show her off. So I asked my mother, "Can you put on a dress and wear stockings when I come home from school?"
She never let me forget my request I made that day.
My grandson is mildly autistic but a really good looking little boy and very sweet. Each year he seems to get a bunch of new classmates and all the little girls just fawn over him. They keep wanting to kiss him, hold his hand. Funny thing is he doesn't like to be touched. But he seems to rein in his displeasure and let them kiss him on the cheek. I asked him why he let them kiss him when he doesn't like it. He said he just wanted to be nice. Makes me smile to think that he may be able to adjust to society after all. Thank goodness for little girls.
Good for your grandson, that he cares enough about other people to do what is difficult for him in order to be nice. He sounds like a good kid, who is being raised by a caring family. I wish him good luck in the future.
Unfortunately I can only click once, otherwise I'd give 100 clicks for your grandson and family.
@Rick, maybe we could use all your excess clicks on your post. I would love to give DBS 100 clicks as well.
Both my sons had girlfriends in Kindergarten. It was so sweet! Now they are both married to beautiful women. Love is grand no matter how old you are!
This is so cute! I totally loved my fifth grade 'boyfriend'. We're still pals to this day!
i have 5 cats. they are better then a husband could ever be.
Cats are very good about accepting unappealing people. You should buy more cats.
(( PFFFTT ))
man. Sadly I didn't have a situation like this, maybe I have, I don't remember -- but I sure do know that stories like these are amazing to hear about.
Uh...I'm sure you'll find the catman of your dreams someday. Some men find the overwhelming scent of cat pee and tuna sexy...er, maybe not
My brother had a string of "girlfriends" in kindergarten, then promptly went through the girls are icky phase the next year. I remember my kindergarten crush. He was older...he was in 1st grade. LOL
My son is eight and has been in love with the same girl since he was five. She is skinny with nobby knees, wildly out of control brown hair, and she has a mouth full of some type of braces ..........and my son thinks she is the most beautiful thing to set foot on planet earth ---and because of that I do too :) Love makes the world such a lovely place.
I want to find real life like that. Pure innocent love is one of the most amazing things in the world!!
Well of course their love is real!
The problem is that now that therapists have become involved, they'll start thinking that little girls with close girl friends are early lesbians.
Laura: Actually they very well might be lesbians, and that should not be considered a problem, assuming the little ones understand other people's physical boundaries, and that other people may have different feelings. How other people treat them might be a problem.
I "married" my kindergarten boyfriend on the playground while we were in kindergarten.We were married by the jungle gym.One of my 2 best friends officiated the ceremony,my other best friend was my maid of honor,his best friend was his best man.We were inseparable until the 6th grade when he moved away. I never forgot my kindergarten husband.
I recently reconnected with him and was ahgast to find out he had been unfaithful to me since the 8th grade when he met the girl that he is currently with LOL :-) we still hang out a lot now though. He is one of my closest friends.
My daughter fell in love with a boy in her class and even brought him a rose for Valentine's day. She was crushed and cried when he didn't show up to class that day (they were both in pre-K). He ended up moving away and she started a new school. Not sure how strong this "love" was though...she got over him in less than a week.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all find that wide-eyed feeling again?!
Well, just look to Hollywood. Some of those actors/actresses find someone new every time they wander onto a movie set, and they cast aside whomever they had previously.
But no, they don't seem to be the happiest people. They just seem to be beautiful, messed-up people.
You says its all cute now but with all this sex offender hysteria, those "little innocents" could land on the public registry for all this. Don't believe me? Delaware registered a 9 year old on the list. Texas registers 10 year olds. Kids as young as 6 have had permanent marks on their school records for "inappropriate" touching, which amounted to nothing more than innocent hugs. This is no longer about innocence and cute. I guess you have no choice but to teach them never to say such things lest they land on this shaming list.
That is a BIG problem. It looks like sex education starts in kindergarden now, whether the parents like it or not.
No, it looks like the adults start hypersexualizing everything kids do in kindergarten whether the parents like it or not.
I was the shortest girl in kindergarten, and I had a crush on the tallest boy. Mrs. Carr made us line up by order of height, so I was always first, my crush was always at the end of the line. To make our circle, we had to wrap our line around and hold hands until we were all linked together--so I always got to hold my sweetie's hand for a few seconds, until he yelled something about "cooties".
That is cute! LOL dang cooties.