Lena was registered at the Montessori school nearby—something I would later regret. It was hard for him.

He was going through the same learning process as I was, perhaps an even more rapid rebirth of identity—one that, in later years, would emerge as confident but not assertive, cautious but not timid.

But in his first year of school, that identity was throttled by his inconvenient Chinese past—a past where he was frequently scolded by the nanny:
"Don’t touch that dirty stuff! It’ll kill you!" or "Don’t bike too fast, you’ll fall!"

Up until now, freedom and autonomy had never been part of his upbringing. He had been taught to be obedient, cautious, and submissive.

It must have felt like a terrible rupture—to tear down the old system and install the new. But with agility, he gradually adjusted.

Dropping him off at the school gate in the morning was no longer a sad moment. And sometimes, when I picked him up, I even spotted a smile.

After the first few months, he made some friends—one was a Black boy from Ghana, another a boy from a few streets down, the only white child in the class.

The white boy sometimes came over to our house to play, and occasionally, Lena went to his.

Cedric was the biggest contributor to these early friendships—he was the one conversing with the parents, not me. I let myself fade into the background in those moments, knowing Cedric would take the lead.

“It’s important to start playdates early,” Cedric said as we walked home from the boy’s house one afternoon. We just picked Lena up from his playdate. “When he turns six, we’ll arrange sleepovers too. But not yet—he’s too small.”

“Six?” I frowned. “That’s too early for me. I never had a sleepover in my life.” Even the idea of playdates at age five was already beyond my comfort zone. Lena could barely describe what happened at school—how could he possibly explain anything that happened at someone else’s house overnight?

“The younger they start, the better. It makes them more independent, more in control of themselves. It’s good for their social development.” Cedric stated this as an obvious fact, as if the decision had already been made.

“Is it because that’s how you were raised?” I asked, recalling something his mother once told me, when Cedric as small, he spent many weekends at other people’s houses as a result of single motherhood. “You were always at someone’s place, or someone was at yours.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But it wasn’t just for convenience. It’s good for your brain.”