Today I had BoyTwo put on a pair of cargo shorts. He promptly discovered the many pockets and loops (duh, they're hard to miss, there's fifteen of them) and starting listing off all the things that he would place in them.
guns
knives
guns
toys
guns
The shorts are no longer in his wardrobe. Who would've thought those to be a trigger?
I don't care if he is a boy. I hear all the time "oh, you're just not used to boys, it's a boy thing." Really? Because I'm not okay with an almost 8 year old boy or girl fantasizing about carrying around guns and knives and planning how to use them. My friends, he is talking for reals, he is not just being 'a boy'. Pretty sure you'd be a little unhinged if your 8 year old was telling you graphically how he planned on using the guns and knives on people. The best I can do right now is to remove all of these things from his life and replace them with good things and happy, safe things that will hopefully retrain his brain so he's not a gang member/felon at the age of 16. And if that means no cargo shorts, then so be it.
I understand.
ReplyDeleteI do.
It's different. Alex would imitate using a machine gun to plow down things when he first got home. It wasn't pretend. It wasn't for fun. It was vicious and angry and it made me sick inside.
It's taken awhile and a lot of talks about what is okay and what will send you to jail.
He's still a tough little kid and most the neighbor boys won't play air soft with him. They run and he gets mad "They should stay and fight!" Right. I won't stay with a crazed Ukraine taking aim at me! But he does have a very good sense of right and wrong at this point. He sends friends home when they don't obey the wrestling rules. Like hitting below the belt or choking. Mainly they play dirty because they can't pin Alex. We've had to have a few lessons about letting our friends win every once in awhile - so we can have friends.
I do think that these kids were exposed to a lot of violent movies and knowing that they'll be on their own they aspire to be so viciously tough because they've all been at the bottom of the pecking order at one time or another.