When you give them swords – should you really be shocked when they use them?

Another post in my on-going struggle to understand my son.  I’m a girly-girl.  I don’t like bugs, I don’t like violence.  I have a soft spot for baby dolls, I like playing dress up.  I don’t understand, at a core level, my son’s fascination with super heros, all things military, guns and weapons and bugs and dirt.  I adore him, he’s my Samilicious boy, and thank God every day that I had the extreme wisdom and good luck to pick a father for him who’s awesome at all things boy.   If nothing else, having a son has impressed upon me the absolute and utter importance of having a strong good man there to help raise him.  Daughters need their dads too – don’t get me wrong (as a daughter who grew up without a dad…) – but boys need them on a whole different level.

But I’m still horrified when he whacks the neighborhood kid over the head with his light saber.  Tears and hysteria all over the place, the neighbor hollering that Sam hit him on the head, Sam screaming back that he was lying, and both boys crying like their hearts were broken.  We broke them up for a while, my neighbor took her tearful boy back home, and I lugged my devastated boy into the house.

Fortunately, the kid’s mom was great about it (and confessed that she was pretty sure that her son had done more than his fair share of hurting Sam during the battle) and brought him back over to play again later on in the afternoon.  I was afraid that she was going to overreact and not let him come back to play (and freely admit that there was a part of me that wanted to do that – Sam’s NEVER done anything like that before and I wondered who had really done the hitting).  But in the end, she brought him back, and was totally cool about it.  We mutually agreed that they were kids, and sometimes kids play too rough, and that only by doing could they learn what was okay and what wasn’t.  Now that they’ve both been hit with a light saber, I bet they hold back and don’t swing them at each other anymore.  Or maybe I’m just hoping – I’m pretty sure it’s not the last time I’ll be cleaning Sam up after a battle….