a bit of bad parenting

David is still obsessed with dinosaurs.

Almost every day, at some point, he and Kate pretend to be dinosaurs.

Some days David is a meat eater and I am his prey.
Some days he is a brontosaurus trying to make friends.
Some days he is a pteradactyl looking for fish.


Yesterday, was his most creative day.

He and Kate were pretending to be Allosaurs. They were looking for some meat to eat, because, as he explained to Kate and I, he had a nest filled with babies that were hungry. He was going to kill another dinosaur and bring it back to his babies to eat.

I was actually pretty impressed.

It's hard to explain unless you see him do it, but David does a fantastic job pretending to be a dinosaur - he moves his hands like claws, arches back his head when pretending to takes bites out of another dinosaur, rocks back and forth on his legs.

So, where do you find yourself asking, does the bit of bad parenting come in?

Well, at one point he yelled to Kate, "C'mon Kate (because he was yelling to Kate), there's a baby brontosaurus over here. It's parents left it alone. Lets kill it and bring it to our babies."

And, I told him that maybe killing babies wasn't such a good idea. And, that I think he and Kate
ought to play something else and take a break from dinosaurs.

(See, just a bit of bad parenting.)

I don't know why it bugged me so much. Don't I "kill" meat and bring it home for my babies to eat? It's not like he yelled, "C'mon Kate, lets kill this baby dinosaur and watch it bleed all over the carpet, suffering."

Part of me was very surprised and impressed. David can do some mighty good pretending.

sigh. But, I think part of me was embarrassed as well. Not of David, but for David. Kids can be cruel. And so can other mothers. What would the moms and kids say at the playground at preschool when David was pretending to kill some baby dinosaurs? Do he or I really care? And why would I ever try to stifle his creativity?

I guess I don't know the answer to the last part yet.

I can, at times, be a very insecure person. Am I projecting that insecurity on to him?

Of course, David was really confused. I am sure he didn't understand why I asked him to stop playing. I wasn't sure why I asked him to stop playing.

We talked the next day about it and I apologized for confusing and told him that he could keep playing it. He told me he was glad because he really liked playing it.