This chapter uses the suggestion of Tinsy-girl that Hermione's parents intervene with regard to her social skills when she is young. This is the first of multi chapter set on this topic, but the chapters won't necessarily be in a row.
It was the morning of Saturday, August 18th, 1984, and Dan and Emma Ganger had taken their daughter, Hermione, to the local playground, which had only opened about a month prior.
For the longest time, there had been no playground in the neighborhood where the Grangers lived.
But a wealthy local businessman had made a huge anonymous donation to the city government with the understanding that the money would be used towards building a playground for the neighborhood children.
As Hermione was now only a month and a day away from her fifth birthday, her mom and dad thought having a local playground was a fantastic opportunity for her. While Hermione was born on September 19th, 1979, she would be starting Kindergarten that September as the school in the Grangers' school district allowed children to attend Kindergarten so long as they had attained the age of five by the end of the calendar year.
So, around ten in the morning, Mr. and Mrs. Granger took Hermione to the playground and told her she could play until lunchtime.
While Hermione played at the playground, Mr. and Mrs. Granger had the idea of supervising her without prodding too much. They wanted her to have some freedom within the context of the playground. So, they sat down on a bench adjacent to the playground and let Hermione loose.
Mr. and Mrs. Granger smiled as Hermione made a beeline for the swing set.
As Hermione mounted the leftmost swing, her mom and dad both warmly recalled the first time in their own childhoods that they had played on swings. Seeing their daughter now have the same opportunity they had enjoyed when they were little kids was heartening.
Hermione started slowly, but quickly gained confidence, swinging quicker and higher with a few minutes on the swing. Hermione was now smiling without thinking about it, experiencing the euphoria of a child at play. Mr. and Mrs. Granger felt their insides glow brighter and brighter and they watched Hermione swing.
Meanwhile, on the rightmost swing, a small mousy haired boy who had turned three a week prior was swinging. He wasn't attempting to swing particularly high, but he was swinging amazingly fast, a ball of energy in human form.
In her own joy of being at a playground for the first time in her life, Hermione hadn't seen this boy when she came over to the swings, but at a sideways glance that Hermione had taken without thinking about it, she saw the boy and his swinging.
Hermione dismounted from the leftmost swing and walked rightward. When she reached the rightmost swing, the boy stopped his swinging, surprised at her appearance.
"Your grip is wrong," Hermione told the boy in a bossy sort of voice, "Let me show the right way to grip a swing. "
Without prompting, Hermione sat on the swing just next to the boy and demonstrated her grip.
"This is the way you hold onto a swing, " Hermione told the boy firmly, "Make sure your grip is strong and all your fingers are close together on both hands."
"Um," said the boy uncomfortably, "A looser grip with my fingers spread further apart works well for me. It's comfortable to me and I can swing pretty fast."
"I was swinging on the leftmost swing before I noticed you were here and I was swinging a lot better than you were, " said Hermione boastfully, "I swung better than you because I had the proper grip with a strong grip and fingers close together."
"Go away," said the boy, now sounding annoyed and exasperated.
"You remember what I said, " Hermione told the boy defiantly.
Hermione returned to the leftmost swing and resumed her fast and high swinging.
Mr. and Mrs. Granger exchanged urgent looks that told each other plainly, "We'll have to talk to Hermione about this later today."
As the bottom of the hour approached, more kids had come to the playground. There were only five swings, and they were now all taken.
Kids had started to form a line to play on the swings.
As soon as he saw that all the swings were full and other kids were waiting, the boy on the rightmost swing dismounted from it and offered it to the boy at the front of the line. A series of kids came and went from the second through fifth swings from the left, swinging for a few minutes each and then offering the swing to the next kid in the line. Hermione, however, remained on the leftmost swing all this time, seemingly oblivious to all of this.
Mr. and Mrs. Granger exchanged looks again. Finally, Mrs. Granger approached her daughter.
Hermione stopped swinging and said, "Hi, mom, is it lunchtime?"
"No," said Mrs. Granger, "But I thought you'd like try some of the other activities the playground has to offer before lunchtime does come."
Hermione dismounted from the swing with nary a syllable and went off to play on the monkey bars as the next girl in line took over the leftmost swing.
Before lunch, Hermione, clearly now wanting to experience more of what the playground had to offer, played for a bit on the monkey bars, slid down the slide a few times, went through the play tunnels and bridges a few times, and even built a mini sandcastle in the sand, though it was weakly built and didn't last long.
When her mom and dad finally did take her away because it was lunchtime, Hermione asked, "Mom, dad, can I come here again next Saturday?"
"Yes," said Mr. Granger, "But there are a few things we need to talk about before you can return here, based on the observations we made of you here today."
"We will be talking about these things over lunch," added Mrs. Granger.
Mr. and Mrs. Granger took Hermione home. Mrs. Granger made lunch meat sandwiches of ham, turkey, and chicken with pickles, lettuce, and mustard for them to eat while Mr. Granger poured Budweisers for them to drink.
As the three of them sat down at the kitchen table and began eating their sandwiches and drinking their Budweisers, Mr. and Mrs. Granger looked at Hermione seriously.
"Hermione," said Mr. Granger very seriously, "Your mother and I made some observations about your behavior at the playground today that concern us, especially since you're a few weeks away from starting Kindergarten."
"Was I swinging too high or too fast?" asked Hermione, "Did mom and dad think I was playing in an unsafe way?"
"Nothing like that," said Mrs. Granger clearly, "We'd have intervened right away if we thought you were endangering yourself. "
"However, " said Mr. Granger, "You showed some displays of rudeness and arrogance that need to be addressed."
"Specifically," interjected Mrs. Granger, "The incident in which you told that boy that you had been swinging better than him."
"Well, I was," said Hermione defiantly, "He was using the wrong grip! What's wrong with helping someone learn to do something the right way?"
"He wasn't doing it the "wrong" way, " explained Mrs. Granger, "He was only using a different approach from yours and his approach worked for him."
"Just because someone is doing something differently from you doesn't make them wrong and you right, "said Mr. Granger matter of factly, "There's more than one way of doing things successfully."
"And, " added Mrs. Granger in a very serious voice, "It leaves a bad impression on people to brag and boast. People aren't going to like you if you start telling them face to face that you're better than them or better at something than them."
"It's okay to make a suggestion of doing something a different way, " said Mr. Granger in a businesslike voice, "But it's not okay to insist on your methods being automatically better than all others, that's just rude."
"Speaking of polite and rude," said Mrs. Granger in a crystal clear voice, "It's rude to just walk up to someone and start spewing off observations about them. When you saw that boy, the appropriate response would have been to introduce yourself and ask the boy his name, "Hi, I'm Hermione Granger, who are you?" would have been the thing to say upon first meeting someone, not immediately going off about them or what they are doing."
"Another issue is sharing," added Mr. Granger, "Your mother prompted you to give up that swing by appealing to your interest in experiencing all the activities the playground had to offer, but, did you notice that as soon as he saw there was a line and all the swings were full, that boy who'd been swinging for a while immediately offered the swing to the first kid in the line? Not to mention, all the other kids swung for a few minutes each before letting the next kid take his or her turn?"
"I did see that, but I ignored it, " admitted Hermione, "I wanted to keep swinging so I did."
"That's fine if there's no one else waiting on the swing, " said Mrs. Granger firmly, "But equipment at a public playground is meant to be shared."
Hermione sat and looked at her parents while taking this all in.
"It's very important that you understand how to meet people and how to interact with people before you start Kindergarten so that you can make friends, " said Mr. Granger in a kindly voice.
"On that front," piped up Mrs. Granger, "Before you return to the playground next week, your father and I are going to be teaching and practicing social skills with you here at home via role playing. When you return to the playground, we will carefully observe your interactions with the other kids there. Our observations will tell you how well you've learned and how ready you are for Kindergarten."
Looking up at her parents, Hermione said, "Okay," in an uncertain voice, unsure of what lie ahead.
"it's going to be okay, Hermione," said Mrs. Granger reassuringly, "It's just going to take some work."
And with that, the three Grangers smiled at each other as they finished their lunch.
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