Today, Amado and I were outside playing soccer. My phone rang, and I thought it was one of my students who has really been struggling, so I wanted to pick up. I apologized to Amado - I really try to not take calls when we are playing. I feel like its disrespectful to him and makes him feel like he is less important than my phone calls. Its just a personal policy that I try not to break. But today, I thought it was this student, so I picked up, and it turned out not to be that student, but I got stuck on the phone for a few minutes because I had picked up in the first place. Arg.
So, as I hung up the phone, I apologized again to Amado and asked him if we could keep playing. He didnt give any kind of attitude or anything, but before we started playing again, he said, "Mami, con este juego no se permite telefonos".
"Si, mijo, te prometo" I told him, feeling kind of bad.
"Porque necesitamos correr rapido, y el telefono se puede caer". I thought it was interesting that he was kind of diluting his pointed message, by telling me it was because my phone could break and not because it was rude for me to take a call while we were playing.
"Si mijo, y tambien porque estamos jugando juntos, y necesito enfocar en ti" I said, trying to make explicit the intervention I thought he was trying to make.
"Si mami. Pero tambien es porque tu necesitas enfocar en la pelota" he says, as it whizzed by me.
