First of all, I think I might be going crazy.
Secondly, I'm wondering why my son is so…umm…active and…umm…vocal and if it's normal.
And yes, the two things are related.
Running. Eli runs places. Like from the loveseat to the couch. And lands with a great leaping crash. And a mighty yell. He loves to catch Evan off guard with a giant roar. Evan dashes away screaming the shrillest scream. It really does hurt to be a bystander.
Noises. Sound effects. There is no end to them. Eli and Evan are playing on the floor right now and in the past 10 minutes I have heard plenty of noise (although much tamer than sometimes) but very few actual words.
They play together almost all the time. I'm mostly glad for that. But when you're playing with someone, you egg each other on and have so many more sources of conflict. And they're so loud together.
I don't like violence. I don't even let my kids watch Spiderman or Batman. They go to Sunday School, for pete's sake. And yet it is astounding how much violence comes out of their mouths.
If I were to record a small sound byte of one them playing with their Lego men, it would sound like this: "Bew! Aughhhh! Nooo! I'm gonna shoot you. Okay, ready to attack and kill? Blast off! Bew! Bew! Get him! Get him! Aughhhh! Got him! Get your sword! We will fight him! Noooo! Yeah! Bew! Bew!"
Help! That's just plain embarrassing.
They would never play with dolls, but give them their Lego men and they have families set up. Evan is usually the baby and Eli is the big brother or the dad. But sometimes in this nice boy version of "house," father and son march off together to attack some unknown (to me) enemy. What is going on!
How do we stop the violence? Is it even possible? I haven't said too much to them about the violent play thus far because I don't want to make it more intriguing than it already seems to be. But maybe now I'm too late. I'm just not sure how to tackle this issue. Ideas would be oh so welcome…
I should add that Eli can be very calm and sit with a book for a long time. He loves to be read to and really takes in the story. The excessive activity mostly comes out when he is playing or fighting or eating or bathing or folding laundry or getting boots on etc WITH EVAN. And as I've been writing he has calmly come to me for a hug and a kiss. He is such a sweetheart- it's just that the little sweetheart is currently driving me batty. (Are you allowed to say that about a precious son? I feel sorta bad…)
Of course, as I write they are curled up on the floor together being cute, cuddly puppies. Never mind, the bigger puppy just attacked.
4 comments:
You are aloud to say that they are driving you crazy- we know you love them. When my boys play with Legos, it's all about building machines (or merchines as Jesse says)so we constantly hear brrrrmmmm, brrrmmmm. Maybe (all) the boys could work on building something this week (while we go out for coffee.) Do they have a coffee shop up there? :)
have you been eavesdropping at my house? it sounds very familiar!! I guess that doesn't help you know if it's healthy... ;-) one thing that helped me relax a bit with the "violence" is reading "wild at heart". i just don't let them ever pretend to shoot at people. now that i think of it, though, josiah has been talking about shooting "bad guys" recently. sigh.
Tyler has recently begun talking about shooting, saying random *scary* things like "Mommy, if you were really strong, you could pull my arms off and lots of blood would come out." What!?!
As for their play - according to my (incomplete) knowledge of play therapy - enacting a drama where they go out to conquer something with their Daddy sounds healthy. They see a defined good/bad in the world, they have aligned themselves as being on the "good" side, and see their Dad as aligned with them. You know them better to know whether that could be an accurate interpretation...
My husband wanted me to suggest that you teach them to hunt. He says it channels the aggression. He also thinks its a positive thing that he gave them those guns before he left for far-off lands.
Fernie
PS. This is actually my husband.
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