Recently, my “best friend” Jeanette invited my family over to her house on a quiet evening in our little suburb north of New York City. The grown-ups ate guacamole and chips and sipped wine while the kids ate macaroni and cheese and caused chaos in the living room. It was all thanks to my son’s intuitive friendship matchmaking skills.

Jeanette has a son the same age as mine, and we’d met through mutual friends. We were casual acquaintances when my son — who was 4 years old at the time — asked out of the blue one day if she was my “very best friend in the whole wide world.” I answered, “Well, I don’t actually know her that well. I’ve only met her a few times.”

But he started asking me about her all the time. “Who’s calling?” he’d ask when my phone rang. “Is it Jeanette?” If we were going to a party, my son asked if she would be there. When I had to go to a work-related event, my son asked me if Jeanette was there, although she and I don’t work together. “Who are you emailing?” he’d ask me when he saw me composing an email. “Is it Jeanette?”

What was it that made my son think she and I were best friends? My husband and I had various theories. Did my son somehow sense that Jeanette and I had things in common, beyond the fact that we were both parents and lived in the same town? Maybe he harbored a crush on her or saw her as an ideal mom for some reason. She and I have similar names — maybe that resonated with him.