Inside Sam's brain

"Mo-oom!"

I could tell from the way Elena said "Mom" that she was going to follow it up with some sort of grievance against Sam. I was expecting her to say he called her weird or farted in her face or something.

I was not expecting her to say, "Mom! Sam called me a non-toxic helium-filled lady!"

I told her I don't think that really qualifies as an insult, and that seemed to keep her happy. As Sam gets older, we're getting more of a glimpse into his creative mind.

Last week, he was upset because 3 of his toys had been destroyed in one week when he left them outside. (Kind of hard to avoid when you live in a neighborhood with 15 young boys - especially when one of them discovers a small ax). I had recently been reading a new book that talked about helping kids when they are upset by giving them what they want in fantasy.

I've already used this with the kids while shopping. When Elena used to say "I wish I could have that," my gut response was "No, we're not getting that." And then she would say, "I know we're not getting it. I was just telling you that I wish I could have it."  After that I usually responded by just imaging with them that they could have whatever they want: "It would be so fun for you to have a giant dollhouse to take up half of our living room, wouldn't it?" And there was no arguing - only wishful thinking.

So I decided to expand this technique. Rather than saying, "Well, you know that if you leave your toys outside, there's a good chance they will get broken,"I said, "I know it's no fun when your toys break. Wouldn't it be nice if your toys were so strong they could never break?"

"Yeah!" Sam said, "I wish when someone else tried to take one of my toys without asking, it would scan them and find out what their greatest fear is, and then it would turn into their greatest fear and scare them away!"

Or that. At any rate, it seemed to do the trick. He went off happy much more quickly than I expected.

This strategy has been less effective on Charlie, who's at that single-minded 3-year-old stage, but we'll keep trying...

And now for a sampling of my attempt at getting a nice picture of the 4 kids. I think I managed to get one.

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The one and only decent shot