The Older Crowd

Eli has always seemed to prefer his 'older' friends, but recently he's gravitated towards them even more. One of Eli's teachers has a 6-year-old son who only speaks Chinese. Until this week, he spent his days in Eli's class, playing with puzzles and whatnot while his mom taught. Eli often speaks of this boy at home, but I thought their interaction was the same or less than that he had with other kids (his own age) in the class. Today I spoke with another mom from the class and she corrected me. Since she has been in the classroom with her child almost the entire time each day, she has seen Eli and this older boy play as if they were best friends. Apparently Eli gravitates towards him several times each day, to do puzzles, to play with trains, or just to hang out. When Lehr and I visited the class on Tuesday, we saw the two of them together when Eli and his class went to the drop-off area, where the other boy was waiting also. Immediately Eli and he started goofing around. Lehr and I found this quite amusing, considering they don't have much verbal communication. After all, Eli doesn't understand Chinese at all (to my knowledge), and the other little boy is very limited in English (his mom says he has about a handful of words). I wonder what they talk about?