sports guys

While Gabriel napped this afternoon, I packed the car: a leotard and ballet slippers for Frances, snacks and water bottles, phone, wallet, and an enormous cardboard box which I filled with the Sunday Washington Post's sports section, the Sunday and Monday Capital Gazette's sports sections, scissors, and glue. Why? Because I hoped that the promise of another sports guys collage - the biggest yet - to be created during Frances's ballet class would stave off the afternoon demon that has lately begun taking possession of our dear Gabriel.

It did. But I cannot help noticing that my son's sports guy fever has been growing on a track parallel to his sudden rise in tantrums and anger. In the past I have marveled at his love affair with power: the way he channels dump trucks, volcanoes, and superheroes in wild dances around the house, emitting noises that mimic explosions and crashes, singing his own personal theme songs. It makes me smile. It makes me wonder about the effects of gender-bound expectations on us as we grow (he has expressed more aggression in three short years than I have in all my life, I am certain of it). Watching him, I have often wished I could punch the air and shout instead of stewing and simmering inside. It sure looks like a satisfying release. 

Which is probably why neither Mike nor I have intervened much as Gabriel's interest in weaponry and pretend violence has grown, or worried about his fascination with football. (Seriously, it is pretty cute when he shouts TACKLE! with little boy gusto and crashes into the couch). Tinker toy cannons are so innocent! Pirates and knights are the stuff of fabulous stories! What's not to like?

So with the exception of guns and killing talk, I tend not to intervene. (See this post I wrote for Mothering about an ambivalent episode involving water guns - I later buried them in the recycling bin). I heartily approve of imaginative expressions of aggression that are not intended to hurt anyone in real life. So healthy, I think to myself. Yes, let's express our feelings, all of them! 

But maybe while I was sitting back and smiling, we tipped over a line. If I tallied up every spare minute on the couch, in the car seat, or sprawled on the kitchen floor with the sports section, I think I'd find that Gabriel spends hours each day gazing at, and fantasizing about, football players. The more violent the episode captured on film, the better. Maybe instead of sublimating his three year old fiery anger into something manageable, his intense focus on tackling is only fanning the flames higher.

But you should see his face when we open the paper and the sports section falls out! It is pure joy, and the miracle of miracles is that a new sports section arrives every single day. Making collages out of the photographs is a bigger thrill still, and so it is a sincere pleasure to cut and paste with such a happy boy. We have no television, so these are the only images he has to go on as he cobbles together his own version of what god-like sports guys do in their heavenly sports games. There is a lot of tackling, dodging, falling, shouting, and jumping on the couch, to be sure. Can this really be a bad thing?

A therapist once told me that 'brain branching' happens around birthdays and half-birthdays. Brain branching, apparently, can make a person really out of sorts. And maybe all of the refusals to leave the car (or the house,  or the playground, or the backyard), all the swipes he takes at his sister, all the glowering, crying, and declarations of "I don't want to live here anymore!" can be attributed to a simple brain branch. That would be nice. He'll be three and a half next week; clearly it's the neurons!

But what if all the football guys and soldiers and pirates have crowded his imagination, hitting an internal saturation point, and are now poisoning my boy's normally peaceful relationship to the world? Whether or not that's the case, it is high time Mike and I worked out our own feelings about violence and instituted a related family policy. Your thoughts, dear readers, are very welcome on this one. How and when does violent play shift from something that can redirect aggressive feelings into something that can escalate those feelings? And how can we, as parents, discern where that fuzzy line is and then gently nudge our children a few inches away from it?