“When you are done, I’ll be done.”

“When you are done painting, I’ll be done painting.”

DS and BK are painting. Four jars of paint sit in the middle of the table–each a different hue of blue or green. Each girl loves to paint, and although I am sitting near them, I am not attending closely to the work they do. My knowledge of their temperaments and of their mutual commitment to the artistic endeavor reassures me that there will be no conflict.

Eventually, they strike up a conversation over their work.

“Both of us have the same skin,” DS says.

“Yeah, but we got different names,” BK adds.

“The same skin and different names,” I echo, my interest piqued.

“Yeah, and we’re both girls and we both got the same color skin and we got different color hair and different names,” BK reiterates, expanding.

“And but we got different color shirts today.” DS adds.

BK compares shirts with DS, and confirms that, indeed, their shirts are different.

There is a pause. And then, the words:

“When you are done painting, I’ll be done painting,” BK says.

“Ok!” DS replies with cheer.

The trajectory of this discussion and its impact—that the girls, after painting, chose to play ball together—is fascinating. There is a buildup, a crescendo, and then a resolution. Each serves the purpose of unifying—through explicit cues—the children’s intentions and perspectives.

First, there is the discussion of skin and name. Inherent in this is the discernment of similarity and difference, and the enjoyment that comes from exploring the ways that these two are not mutually exclusive. The coexistence of similarity and contrast is an exciting and consistent feature of early childhood discussions and lived experience. How exciting must it be to realize that this distinction can exist even within your own life on a micro-level! At the same school in the same class, the same gender identity and engaged in the same activity—yet different names and different color hair! It is a lot to unpack, and a pleasure to wonder at.

Eventually, shirts enter the discussion—they are not the same either—differences abounding. Is it significant, one wonders, that the reiteration of difference came last? Was it this reiteration that encouraged BK to add what, I believe, is the conversational crescendo?

“When you are done painting. I’ll be done painting.” 

Despite its matter-of-fact tone, the content and temporal positioning of these phrases carry significant weight.

In essence, after the building up of their mutual understanding of one another’s similarities and differences, BK makes a definite bid in the direction of sameness. The comingled intentions of their social and creative interaction has, its seems, stuck with her. Her words are in essence a four-year-old’s way of asking: “Can we play together some more when we finish up here?” They may also be a way of saying “We are the same,” or “I want us to be more the same than different.”

DS’s enthusiastic “Ok!” is a sure acceptance. And the game of catch the two play thereafter brings smiles to both of their faces.