Boys scare me

One of the admins I used to work with was recently telling me about one (of her three) sons. He is four and recently confessed to her that he has “bad thoughts”. Brandy asked him what his “bad thoughts” were. He told her that he has bad thoughts about breaking things, like that sometimes he just wants to pick up a lamp and smash it.

Brandy was, with reason, surprised by this admission and furthermore, quite concerned. She promptly went to the book store and bought a book called “Raising Boys”. She was appalled! I agree with her, as a little girl I was never inclined to just break things for the sheer pleasure of demolition.

One summer (1997 – I remember because it was a great California vintage year) we went to the Napa Valley with a number of friends who were living in San Francisco. One friend was working for an architect who had bought a house in Napa, with the intention of demolishing it and building a new house there. We had permission to stay in it and if the desire struck, tear it to pieces. Never have I seen 6 or 7 grown men (well they were 24-26 I guess, so grown is debatable), take so much enthusiasm in tearing apart the inside of a house. It was like a dream come true to them. Well to the ones who didn’t do the grappa droppa.

Leif has just started frightening me with a show of this “boyish” behavior. The other day we were sitting with a toy and Leif had it in his hands. A glimmer in his eye showed up and he says to me, “I break it”.

Umm no, I tell him, we don’t break our toys.

This time he has the glimmer and that willful charmer smile, as he looks at me and repeats, “I break it”, just like he is trying to charm me like a snake into admitting that OK, yes, you can break it.

But mommy is immune to snake charming. Much to his surprise I didn’t even succumb when he said, “pees I break it”. THAT only resulted in the toy being removed from his hands and put away.

Probably a bad move… now he won’t tell me out of fear of my taking the toy (or other) he desires to break. He will just do it.

Boys scare me.