I remember being horrified as a non-parent about how some people handle their kids. Things seemed so simple to me. We obviously still try to keep our kids in check, but my view of the world has become a bit more practical as the quantity of kids that I call my own grows.
Let me set the stage for a recent episode that drove the whole change of perspective home. Recently, Michele was at the local library with the boys. She was reading to Nolan. Braden was crawling around sampling unidentified tidbits from the floor, and Evan was having the run of the place.
Michele noticed that Evan was periodically running up to a lady and her daughter who were sitting close by. She couldn't hear what he was saying to them, but there was no screaming, so she let things be. After a while, the lady happened to walk by Michele and Nolan.
"Is that your son?" she asked, pointing to Evan, who was stacking books and jumping off of them.
"Yes, was he bothering you?" answered Michele.
"No, not at all. He's a very smart little boy. He was telling us all about humpback whales [one of Evan's current obsessions]. Also he kept talking about a 'baby monster' and telling us that we should hide. Do you know what he's talking about?"
"Oh yeah. He's talking about his youngest brother. He and Nolan here like to play a game where they pretend that the baby is a monster, and then run screaming from him and hide."
Michele later told me that as she told the lady the background behind the "baby monster", the woman got an incredulous/horrified look on her face, mumbled something akin to "how nice", and made her leave. Michele tried to get in a "he loves it, too", but the woman was already gone.
"You know," Michele told me later, "the funny thing is that I was the one that made the game up for them. They were both complaining of Braden following them around and grabbing them, so I told them to run from the baby monster. It was one of my better games, and all three of them loved it so much that they've been playing for weeks now."
Hey, it keeps them from killing each other, and entertains them too. Let's all run from the baby monster!
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2 comments:
That is very funny. Are you sure that woman was the mother? I would have thought any parent would have known that kids are weird. I certainly would not have been surprised by what your kids were doing. They were just entertaining themselves.
very good idea, my son to snatches thinks from his sister, now i will invent this game too. Baby monster!!
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