Boys and Guns

I hate guns. I do. I think they're entirely unnecessary outside of the military and law enforcement. I get there's a second amendment, but really, I'd like it better if no one was armed.

Guns = power. Those that have guns have the power. Those that don't -- are weak. And up until this year, I've managed to keep X-man happy with just his renaissance fair bow and arrow (somebody hand made it out of bamboo and then made 3" padded pillows at the ends.) They were declared a basement or outdoor toy.

But this year, he's been way into guns. He sees guns, any gun at any play date and immediately picks it up and says things like, "I am a bad guy. This is a stick up!" Or my favorite, "I'm going to kill you." Seriously, even the revolver from a Clue game.

Now, I know this is all part of normal development and play. It's just the way some kids are. They navigate the whole good/bad spectrum this way. And X-man is good if he notices someone getting upset with saying, "No one is a bad guy! Let's go hunt an imaginary bad guy down."

And yes, I get that he's too young to understand that vigilante justice -- isn't really justice.

But I hate it.

Today at a play date with two new friends, brothers, we went to their community's swimming pool. There a band of boys (most of them in 4-6th grade) had mega sized super soakers. X-man asked if he could play with one. The boys said yes. Then as he engaged them in "war"over the next 20 minutes they decided that they were going to gang up on him. Then they took the gun they said he could have and replaced it with a lame one with 1/45th of the spray power to make him weaker.

Now, please note that these were NOT the boys we were there to play with. And for a while the new friends got tired of how crappy the big boys were being (after they used kick boards to shield X-man like awesome friends), and were happy to go lie out on their towels. X-man was not deterred. There were, after all, guns to be played with!

I called him out and asked what was going on. He told me that the other boys weren't being nice. I told him he wasn't in trouble, but that I didn't like how those boys were talking to him and treating him. He was negotiating, using his nice words, telling them that they made him uncomfortable and that he didn't like having the guns pointed at his face. And couldn't they all be on the same team? They kept taunting him, making fun of the fact that I wouldn't let him go in areas over 4' deep. I explained that what they were doing was bullying, and he should play with his nice friends.

But, again, there were guns to play with.

Finally, when they decided to take his "lame" gun away and abandon him entirely, he started crying in the pool. One of the boys' mothers looked up and asked what was going on. I explained that he wanted to play with them, and they were ganging up on him as the new kid. She called the bigger boys over and made them give him a gun to play, but again, when Mom's interfere with big boy dealings, they get embarrassed. No one wants their Mom to tell them who to play with, and they kept their distance from him for the last 10 minutes we were in the pool.

When he got out of the pool to dry off, he looked at me with such sincerity and said, "Mom, I promise, if I can have a water gun, I won't ever shoot you or Lily. I'll water the garden. I'll shoot the fence. But I won't hurt anyone or bully anyone ever."

I told him I'd talk about it with his Dad tonight. I'm not a fan. Guns = power, posturing, violence to me. But watching him try to fit in was difficult, and maybe it's because we had just seen Dr. April, his therapist, but he was doing an OUTSTANDING job of trying to take the high road, especially for a kid who was at least 4 years younger than the big kids.

The other thing that my friend recommended was going over and talking to the other children's parents. I felt at the time that it would only make X-man's embarrassment worse. Plus, I really, was sitting there watching him try to handle it himself. He didn't tattle. He didn't hit. He didn't resort to so many of the things he learned in kindergarten. He really did try to engage them as a big kid, but he also learned that not all kids respond to compromise and discussion, particularly when they know it's their toy and that they get it back just by asking for it. And that was REALLY frustrating for him. He felt that holding onto that gun was the only thing that gave him -- Power. And I learned not to jump in and try to manage everything, even though I really wanted to tell those boys where they could shove their guns.

In the end, X-man said he wanted to go back and just play with his new friends at their house with their toys. I'm hoping that happens, but we also had to have a long talk about how you don't play with bullies and follow their rules just because you want to play with their toys. How having friends without cool toys, who treat you nicely are worth far more than mean boys with guns.

But he wasn't the only one who felt left out, one of the new friends asked if he could go to nerf.com and check out the guns there when we got back to their house. X-man asked if he could do that, too. So, I think all three of them were a bit envious.

Here he is fishing at Dana Colbert Park a couple weeks ago. One of these days, maybe he'll bait his own hook!

Pleasurable Playdates

I've been reading a lot about children with social anxiety lately. On X-man's report card the only area he appears to still be having real troubles with in the classroom is making transitions from one thing to another.  In the summer, I used a tool that I learned about at the Autism Resource Room at U of I and laminated some cards that I taped to the door with our activities for the day. We went over them every morning so he knew what was going to happen when. And like a lot of parents, I give him a heads up when time is dwindling.

However, like most kids, he never wants to leave the things he's enjoying. Anyone else have a child that used to completely FLIP HIS LID when you had to leave the train table at the library?

Anyway, he has gotten better as he's gotten older, but he apparently still has a lot of emotional issues about it when they change activities at school. In addition to his social issues about not having close friendships, I thought maybe more one-on-one play dates with some kids in his class that he's identified as having similarities. Today was our first one. And, um, it's been an hour and 20 minutes and they're having a ball.

It's pretend play with Legos non-stop. I can hear them build cars and race them across the floor. I hear the Ninjago Duels in the Dojo that Nana got him for Christmas. They stopped and looked at the new Ninjago toys on the computer.

Yes, I should admit that MacTroll and I put a computer in X-man's room last week. And, surprisingly to me, I asked for us to set up parental controls. We excluded YouTube from the options. And we singled out 10 web sites that he plays with the most (PBSKids, ABCya, Starfall, NickJr, Lego, etc.). So, he has access to those. The times he can be on the computer is also limited. I felt like the computer gestapo, but I felt good about him having some more responsibility. He's got his own log in and everything. :-)

Moms' Night Out

Sometimes you just have to get out of your house. So tonight, I did.

I had totally forgotten that I had agreed to go to the neighborhood's Moms' Night until the last minute. So X-man and MacTroll headed over to LibbyGirl's by themselves.

And I sat at a Mexican restaurant for almost 3 hours chatting with four women that I only kind of know. But it was a giant stress reliever. I laughed. I cried. And it was nice to be around them.

I should get out more often. I should make that a priority.

Who Knew?

Yesterday, X-man made a new friend "X-man +1." We knew there was another X-man in town because we saw his name on something in one of the elementary schools that we toured. X-man +1 is one year older than X-man. He's a very sweet little boy who loves to go swimming and play Legos. Mmm, sounds familiar.

Yesterday, we went to X-man +1's house. He has a pool in the backyard and the boys played Legos for an hour and then swam for 45 minutes. When X-man got out, his eyes were bright red from diving for rings. This has been happening more and more lately. At Grizzly Jack's I had to hold a cold compress to his eyes to help him out. And he had some eye rubbing issues at Sholem when we're there for a while, he had them after Magic Waters, too. Well, it turns out the home pool was the last straw, and X-man couldn't open his eyes because they itched so bad. He sat through snack okay (because really, who passes up the opportunity to try a Ho Ho for the first time) with the cold compress on his face. X-man +1's grandfather kept apologizing. But we were doing okay, until we weren't. So I swept X-man away to Walgreen's to get a sterile eye wash. He was holding his own until the pharmacist said, "If he starts to have trouble seeing, taking him straight to the hospital."

Great. Thanks. My child had a total freak out for the next 35 minutes. As he's panicking as we leave Walgreen's, I'm trying to call my husband to put him on alert that he'll be holding down our kid while I try to wash out his eyes. (It's a weird feeling if you're not a contact wearer.) I rinsed out both eyes very, very good when we got home, but he was still panicking and screaming, so I called the Ask-a-Nurse line at Carle.

And guess what -- I didn't get a nurse. Why do you call it the Ask-a-Nurse Hotline if there's not actually a nurse at the other end. If I wanted to get put on hold while someone found a nurse, I'd call a main switchboard. But apparently, all the nurses were with patients and busy. Wait, what? It's an Ask-a-Nurse hotline. They offered to "take a message" while my child screamed in the background.

So, I took him to Convenient Care. Because, as with all things X-man, I have to balance his emotional anxiety over things with what I know from First Aid to be true. I knew his eyes stung. I knew that he wanted to keep rubbing them. I knew that as soon as the word hospital came up he thought bad things were going to happen to him, and it was clear that as much as he loves his father, MacTroll was having trouble convincing X-man to calm down. He offered to rinse out X-man's eyes again, but X-man kept screaming, "It's not working!"

So I picked him up and carried him to the car. MacTroll drove us. On the way, I was describing to X-man where we were on the way to the doctor's. That calmed him down immensely. When we got there, I put his flip flops in my purse and carried him in. I let MacTroll register him at the desk and then we went to the waiting room, where X-man sat in my lap and listened (and then 10 minutes later watched with a lot of blinking) Spongebob Squarepants, which he'd never seen.

Some time later, the triage nurse came and got us. X-man still had 1" round circles around his eyes, but the whites of his eyes were -- white again. Goooo eyewash!

He was able to tell the nurse his birthday and answer her questions. He had no idea what to do with an under the tongue thermometer though. We had the ear one before I just upgraded us to the kind where you don't have to touch the child's forehead.

Then we went back to the waiting room... and then we saw Dr. Kirby. I like Dr. Kirby. He's my favorite Convenient Care doc for kid stuff. We've seen him plenty of times for strep throat and pink eye. He's efficient and thorough and polite. So thorough that after he did his physical and eye exam, HE came out to the pharmacy to find us when he noticed the medical assistant didn't do a vision test.

We have a prescription for steroid eye drops, and we now know for sure that X-man has a sensitivity to chlorine. So, now I just have to find a pair of goggles that he'll keep on his head.

As for X-man +1, chlorine sensitivities aside, the playdate was a hit. We'll be contacting them when we get back in town from the Virgin Islands to see if the boys want to come over to our place. :-)