Pliers and Cardboard

Children like to bust things up.   They like to knock block towers down, push over someone else’s hard work and definitely, without question, kick over that sand castle another child’s been working on.    I’m not sure why destruction is an important part of child development, but we try to nurture it when we can.

My son has this thing he’s come up with which makes a lot of sense if you’re the parent of a Montessori-educated child.   If you’re not, this might sound like a bad idea, bordering on negligent parenting.    But bear with me because it all turns out okay at the end of the story.

My son likes my pliers.   I’ve done a lot of jewelry making and I have a drawer with over thirty pair of pliers.   They do different functions in the jewelry making world but in general most are pointy or sharp in one or more direction—which is why they’re so enticing to my son.

What my son wants to do is get the pliers and see what he can tear up with them.    After some negotiation a few years back, we settled on cardboard (typically from broken down boxes) for his plier-based attacks.   My son would see just how much carnage he could exact on the cardboard and I would see how much calmer he’d be afterwards.

He’s done this repeatedly, when the need would arise, for a long time now.   Yesterday he brought two other friends into the process, inviting his next-door-neighbors saying, “you can pick three pair of pliers and then get a piece of cardboard from the garage”.

I had the children meet on the front porch and sidewalk, saying they could do whatever they wanted with the piers and cardboard, but the house (including the sidewalk) was to be protected from damage and hey, didn’t the grass look like a great place to do this fun work?

My neighbor’s son, Whitaker, came up with the best plan, putting his cardboard over the doormat and jabbing down again and again into the cardboard, through the standing bristles of the mat, making lots of satisfying holes in his cardboard.

All three children had fun and no one was injured.   I didn’t get arrested because the children were having fun responsibly.   But what if there had been an accident?   Then there would have been an ice pack and a bandage and most importantly a lesson learned in safety from the child.   I’m okay with a little injury to teach a lesson.   We can’t effectively learn without making mistakes.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been more and more kind to his sister lately.   Don’t get me wrong, he can still be a serious jerk to her, but when he realizes she’s hurting or she’s going to miss out on something because of a poor choice she made, he’ll step in and offer his help or some of his reward.   This is new—very new.   My son is exhibiting signs of empathy, something he didn’t understand until relatively recently.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Not only is my daughter managing her hourly drops schedule, she’s putting in the drops herself some of the time.   She’s not always hitting the eye directly, which is causing a decent bit of wastage with the drops, but heck, I am so not complaining.   My daughter, instead of fighting and crying about the drops that sting and are an annoyance, is helping and doing the job herself.   It is important at this point that I point out she is clearly her father’s child because I would never be so understanding and helpful.