My son wanted to do a model too and so he pulled out the Infinity Gauntlet from The Avengers movies. Only my son didn't want his sister to know what he was working on. He came to find me and wanted me to not tell her, saying it was, "a social experiment." I told him I didn't agree with his decision not to tell her, that she would know if only she could see.
I advocated for her for a while without saying what the model was, which upset my son. He went on to tell her she could guess, but would only give hints when she wasn't paying attention. And he would only give her one guess per hint.
This went on while my daughter put together their model as her father handed her pieces on one side of the table while I organized and handed my son pieces and he put his model together. She didn't get it, mostly because the hints weren't that helpful and she didn't know enough about the movie as she hadn't seen it. She would have only picked up on it from games the two of them had played, although we do have a very large Infinity Gauntlet that Mimi and Gramps gave my son—which is loud, but apparently fun.
Later, when LEGO time was over, I asked my daughter if she was upset by it and I was surprised. She said she had wished I didn't say anything, because the game was fun to her. From prior experiences with things like this with her, that is the last thing I would have expected her to say. My son had been selfish and secretive in a way that was unfair to her due solely because of her lack of sigh. But she was fine with it. Sometimes, you just don't know what the right thing to do is.
The Big Boy Tiny Girl Dog Barking Event: My son became very upset when I yelled at the dog tonight, hustling her into the house and telling her to go into her cage. He thought I was going to hurt her. I was trying to scare the dog because she had aggressively gone after a man when she saw me come out to bring her in due to barking. She is highly fearful but in this case had turned protective and scared at the same time and it redlined her. She is too gentle a dog to do anything intentionally. But scared and defensive and she would have nipped at the man if she had been off her lead.
The children got a lesson from us about what happens to dogs that bite people. My son was hateful and wanting revenge on anyone who would put a dog to sleep over that. He didn't understand initially why it is a better, safer place when we know there are consequences for humans who keep dogs who can attack, or worse still, are trained to attack. They could only picture their sweet, kind dog and the horror of having her put to sleep (or killed, as my son said we should call it.). My daughter couldn't bear to hear about it. We told them it wasn't a common occurrence, but it was something we had to be very aware of because sometimes the dog gets so scared she flips into this strange aggressive mode—and that is not something we can condone. We're working on it with the dog. Things have evolved while she matured during COVID-19 and the lack of socialization has made things more complicated given her fearfulness.
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