If you have every been around preschool or grade school aged kids, you may have noticed the girl and boy games start early. My youngest, now in grade school, recently encountered one of the trickiest girl games, and I have to say she handled it like a champ.

There is a boy in her class who right from day one declared he thought she was the bee’s knees. And beautiful. And that he loved her. And wanted to marry her. The kid is “a natural,” clean cut and good looking. He’s got game already!

Every day after that he waited for her to arrive. I walked her to class the first few weeks, so I go to witness his face light up at the sight of her, watch him rush over, say, “Hi” and then the compliments would begin.

Then he started to “kiss” her. He was savvy enough to know that rather than actually try to kiss her, he would make a little “beak” like with his fingers and peck her on the cheek.

“Momma, why does he do and say all that?” she’d ask me after giving her daily report.

Now before the manosphere perhaps I would have overreacted, read something sinister into it, worry that he would hurt my little girl. But thanks to the guys around here, I knew by then that nope, he was just a sweet little boy with a crush. So I told her just that, and said to be nice to him, and take it as a compliment, then say to him, “My mom says I am too young for all this.”

I was also tempted to ask him what his career goals were, or to see how many camels, sheep, and goats his family might have to offer. (Kidding!)

Now that’s not the tricky part, although navigating girl-and-boy games can be tricky indeed. No, the tricky part was that her friends who were girls started to get jealous and to wish this boy was crushing on them instead. They started to chase him at recess, and try to win his affections away.

But he didn’t waver. He had made his decision. I thought that was very touching, and that it showed him to be of good character rather than a gadabout. (I am a momma bear, after all.)

After a few days when I asked her how she handled it, the girl games, she said matter of fact, “I told them it is not my fault he likes me. And that they didn’t need to get him to like them, they just needed to find their own love of their life. And that he was out there. Somewhere.” The girls accepted this, and all remained friends.

Lol. Out of the mouth of babes! She’s spunky, that one!

If these two actually do end up getting married, I will for sure be writing a country song about all this.