Real Science

Observation:  Kyle had intense night terrors every night for a week.  What’s different?  He’s been playing Super Mario Brothers Galaxy during every spare moment, if allowed.  He gets very frustrated when he can’t beat a level, to the point of tears and screaming.

Theory:  Super Mario Brothers Galaxy and its crazy-making are giving Kyle nightmares.

Test:  Disallow the playing of Super Mario Brothers Galaxy for one week.  See if the nightmares taper off.

Results:  They do!  Huzzah!

I explained the whole thing to Kyle on our way to school one morning.  He asked me a lot of questions, like “What’s a theory?” and “So I will never get to play Super Mario Brothers Galaxy again?”  I told Kyle about science, and how you can have observations and theories about anything in life, and in most cases it’s okay to test them, but not all the time.  He walked alongside me, quiet, and thoughtful, with that look on his face that said he was Concentrating.  I see the same look on Stewart’s face fairly often.

I asked him what he was thinking about.  He said “But, Mommy, that’s not real science.  I want to do REAL science, like with tubes, and chemicals, and one of these,” and he drew the shape of a flask in the air with his finger.

Restricting Kyle to playing less frustrating games seems to have had the desired effect of making his nightmares lessen, if not disappear for good.  However, now he’s doing bizarre things during school, like telling the teacher that his “brain is sleeping” when he doesn’t feel like listening to directions, and refusing to dance with the rest of the class during their faux-P.E. sessions.  Today he got a yellow card – which means a “warning” of disciplinary action – for not quieting down when the teacher asked him to.

Then tonight I found that he had drawn on his bedroom floor – a scribble and the word “BOO!” in green crayon.  I sent him to bed instantly.  The floor will be fine, it’s laminate – put a little Windex on it, it should come right off.  It’s his blatant breaking of the rules that needs a solid consequence.

Later, Kyle tiptoed out of his room, teary-eyed and apologetic, asking me to tuck him in.  We sat on his bed in the dark, and I watched his face, straining to elongate against the bare whispers of baby fat that cling to his frame.  I could see shadows of the teenager he’ll be one day, and I want more than anything for him to look at me this way at that age.  With complete trust and reliance, and regret that he had done something so clearly wrong.

I told him that drawing on the floor is just like painting words on someone’s fence the way we saw as we drove through west Los Angeles yesterday.  “What’s graffiti?” he had asked, when I cursed it out loud.  I likened it to when he was a baby and he scribbled on the table, only this was someone’s very expensive personal property, and you can – and should – get arrested for doing it.  But he won’t get arrested for crayon-on-laminate, because he is only 5.

And there it is.  He is only 5.  After all of this observation, I have a new theory, (and no, it’s not that taking Super Mario Brothers Galaxy away has made Kyle behave badly):

Theory:  At age 5 and in Kindergarten, Kyle is still a little boy.  He’s tall and thin and very, very smart, so people think he’s 7 or 8, or if they are not around children much, 12.  Sometimes I forget, too, and expect him to behave more maturely.

To test my theory, I’ll simply love him, observe him, and give him clear boundaries, and try not to yell too loudly when he pushes back against the momentum of time.

Kyle has strawberries on his face here, because we had gone to Strawberry Shortcake’s 30th birthday party, where there was a face painter, a caricaturist, and a larger-than-life Strawberry Shortcake character in costume.  Both of the boys were scared of her.  Sorry, Shortcake, maybe at your 60th.