Adventures in Parenting, again
A friend asked me the other day, “So, do the boys fight less the older they get?” He’d been caring for two boys, two and four years old, and had been taken about by the tackling/biting/punching/kicking.
I knew what he wanted to hear, but I wasn’t going to lie. “No,” I said. “In my experience it just becomes a more fair fight as the younger one gets bigger and more coordinated.”
And not 24 hours later I was in the kitchen when I hear something that went like this:
7yo Drake: Guppy, stop!
4yo Guppy: NO!
7yo Drake: [suspicious silence]
4yo Guppy: pained wail, then GRRR of frustration
[glass breaking]
I enter the room. They’ve lobbed pieces of the Snap Circuits electric lab at each other. Drake hit Guppy, Guppy returned fire, missed (Drake) and broke a pane in the built-in buffet cabinet that’s original to our 1917 home.
I banished both boys to their room. They came down and I yelled that they were not to come down till I’d finished cleaning up all the glass. Guppy apologized. Drake snuck around guiltily. Was a lesson learned? Was there another fight before bed time? Was there more than one fight?
Well, what do you think?