Blame it on the big kids
Jul 23rd, 2008 | By Chuck | Category: Highlight, Papa Prattle
The last couple of weeks found me walking in the door to a mixture of gun fire and children screaming. Not real guns mind you, but those found at the end of a child’s wrist looking astonishingly enough like their hand. I casually dismissed this the first few times.
“We don’t play with real, or pretend guns, girls. Isn’t there something else you’d rather do?” … strange kids
The days rolled on and many times when my daughter wanted to play it was some gruesome version of Jack and the Beanstalk that always ended with the giant catching Jack and ripping him to bits. I can only assume he did this because this results in an easier to digest Jack. I kept getting caught by surprise with these violent endings to stories that we would normally play out, well… storybook style.
This was beginning to bug me a bit and eventually led me to quizzing my daughter about what we were going to pretend and how it was going to end before we would wander too far into the wooded English countryside that is home to the Brothers Grimm.
I asked my wife if she knew what was going on. I probably should have asked her sooner but the world of pretend play is more my specialty than hers and I figured (my mistake) that maybe she hadn’t caught on to what was going on. Of course, she knew the answer.
“It’s the big kids.”
“The big kids?” I ask
“Yep. With school out the pre-school is watching big kids (5-7) during the day. It seems the younger kids are quite enamored with them”
Ah ha! Enamored indeed. Rotten big kids corrupting my sweet innocent little girl who in turn is corrupting her sweet innocent little sister. The neighbor kid, also a three year old that attends the same pre-school, has been showing similar changes in his pretend play.
What to do. What to do.
I happen to really dig an overactive imagination. I had one as a kid and still have one as an adult. I believe I need to nurse this along. The stories my girl is weaving, while dark and occasionally gruesome, are filled with an amazing amount of detail and clarity of thought.
I don’t want to squash this.
Don’t worry too much. She still makes up plenty of stories that feature a sleeping princess waiting to be wakened by a prince on horseback in a land inhabited by unicorns and fairies. These can be about as pink and fuzzy as they can get.
There’s a teachable moment in here someplace, for me or her. Maybe both. I just haven’t quite figured out what it is yet.
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I am going through this right now… My three year old keeps coming home with new phrases (just actually blogged about this)… and they are not “little boy” phrases. And I always have some sort of family, and his cousins are much older than him and like to play rough, so now my little man likes to play rough. Monkey see Monkey do syndrome. I do the best I can with the disciplining… It is rough sometimes because of the whining of “well so and so is doing it”. Finding the balance sure is interesting that is for sure!
Kims last blog post..Some Milk a Three Year Old & Nuts
Kim, I just read your post and you weren’t kidding. Nice water to be navigating huh?!
I know what you both mean, my little boy is 2 and a half and yes we are going through this as well. His nieces and nephews are quite a bit older than he is and boy is hard to govern everything being said and shown.
it is a tough one, since children are such little sponges. I do however set some ground rules when they come into my home, but it is way different when they are in pre-school.
Hi wblmom and welcome! - We set those ground rules in our place too and they have been pretty solid up until lately. There is such a gap between my oldest and youngest that I forget about this. Like you said, pre-school introduces a whole new level.
Wow… never had to worry about gun play to this point… but my boy has definitely shown some aggression in his play, from stomping on ants to wielding sticks as a club. I would tend to deal with the gruesome comments and thoughts that come from my kids on a situational basis, like saying something like “Yuck! That sounds really gross! How about (alternate ending) instead?” I’m with you, though - imagination is a great thing.
At 15yo, I really worry about peer pressure with my son. I want to believe he is enough of his own person to shun those sorts of things we hope he will never get involved in (drugs/alcohol), but as my kids got older, I started to know fewer of their friends. I can’t say for sure anything about them and how persuasive they will be. It doesn’t get any easier when they get older.
Tara R.s last blog post..Friday Blessings ~ 3.75
Totally know what this is like as well. My daughter’s newest one….”WhatEVER!” So annoying. Although sometimes she messes it up and yells out “forever” when she gets frustrating. So hard to keep a straight face when this happens.
Matts last blog post..My Daughter’s Drawing Is Cooler Than Yours
That’s pretty funny. Ours does the same type of thing as she stomps her feet intending to say, “I’m oughta here!” and instead says, “I’m already here!”
My five-year-old thinks teenagers are evil. I realized I had warped him forever when I mentioned a few bad things that had happened to me and he said something about the mean teenagers. Yep. Big kids suck. Unfortunately, I have a couple of them living right here in my very house!! lol
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Every other weekend I know just what you mean as my teen daughter makes her grand entrance.