The Itsy Bitsy Spider - the supped up version!

Well, the rambunctious and albeit, a little violence-loving, little boy stage has arrived in full bloom. Somehow I knew I couldn't hide it from it forever, but I was enjoying pretending it wouldn't be hard... kind of like labor :) But it's here, and not quite as easy as I suspected. He's still very easy to discipline when need be... but I'm finding that I don't always have the right words or response at the right time. I want to teach him to be civil and kind, but I also don't want to treat normal boy behaviour as something terrible that should be completely extinguished - as I think a large part of society does today. And I don't want to keep him from exploring strong emotions because I would much rather he learn to deal with them then cover them up or hide them from me.

Anyway, on to an example. We were singing in the car, as an attempt to show him that there were lots of fun things to do on our rides around town that don't involve our in-car DVD player :), and I was having trouble getting him to sing the right words. Normally I would encourage creativity and self-expression, but I was having a hard time with that too as he did this to a few of the classics...

"The itsy bitsy spider, went up the water spout, down came the rain, and FIRE AND GUNS AND THEY BLASTED HIM AND PUHCHOW, BAM, BAM!"

OK, time for a new song! How about...

"Ol' McDonald had a farm, eieio, and on his farm he had a SHARP TOOTHED DINOSAUR, AND HE WAS GOING TO EAT US!!!"

Let's sing London bridge...

"London bridge is falling down, AND IT WILL HIT YOU AND YOU WILL HAVE TO SHOOT FIRE AT IT!"

All right then :) maybe we should play a game instead. How about I spy? You usually like that one a lot?

And it worked for about 5 rounds of looking for something green, or shaped like a rectangle, or that had wheels... until he started to spy "something that could SHOOT FIRE AT YOU!"

Nice! I sort of knew this was coming in my observations of others, but I didn't expect him to pick up on it so darn quickly from just a few interactions with "THOSE older boys" - as I like to refer to them :) Just another phase we have to work through I suppose. And I've decided that I'm ready for the challenge (after a brief therapy/"you can do it" session with two dear friends who happen to be the mothers of some of "THOSE older boys"!).

He is still very sweet in "many" instances (however, the word "many" I think might momentarily replace my previously favorite word "most"). He still asks me, "you know why I'm happy mom? because I LOVE you!" I catch him giving hugs to his friends, especially his sweet Brenna, often... and always if/when they're upset. He always wants to hold hands with his friends and wants to make sure they're invited to everything we do :) And he did a great job of not only accepting a new little boy into a play situation today, but he even shared his favorite white race car with him. So I'm hanging on to those memories when I catch him pretending to shoot spider webs at his friend's little sister in an attempt to render her motionless or when he tells me that he's not going to hit anyone, because that wouldn't be nice, but that maybe he will bop them, or bam them, or stomp them, or puhchow!

Super. Game on!