The Bumpy Road to Brotherly Love

There exists in our house this morning a time of holiday peace and love. Down the hall in the living room the two sons are chatting amicably as one of them plays NCAA football on the Wii. In fact, the older one is even sharing his most-valued playing tips with the younger one, and the younger one is even politely voicing his appreciation for this.

It's like the front of a Christmas card, isn't it? One would think such domestic peace lives in our house like this all the time.

But alas, it does not. In fact, the road to this brotherly love has been a bumpy one, starting Monday morning when the boys began spending their holiday period of "all day for the next two weeks" togetherness. Unfortunately, what started as a road of joy and anticipation went quickly downhill from there. Yes, there were some times of working and playing together, but it slowly began to decline into joking jabs, intentional irritation, and slapstick humor lacking in all self-control. Then it moved to yelling and some pushing and shoving. Angry tirades began to spurt up here and there, putting the mother on "intervention standby status". In fact, after noticing a ominously quiet spell after an especially explosive ping pong match in the garage, the mother seriously wondered if one of them had slayed the other and was even then working up the nerve to tell her the bad news.

All of this negative behaviour worked its way into a frothing bad sibling frenzy last night, when the whole family was going out to dinner with friends (whom, incidentally, they like and want to think well of them). On the way to this dinner the parents were aghast to hear the resounding sounds of slaps and punches coming from their two boys who had the extra bad luck of having to sit next to each other in the back of the suburban.

Oh, the horror of it. A severe punishment was quickly brought down on their heads, and they both spent a somewhat somber dinner out with friends, hopefully mulling over their misdeeds.

This morning, both boys awoke repentant and intent on reversing some of their deserved punishment. They were put through the paces by their father, and then were both so appreciative to have the punishment reversed that now they just love each other.

Which leads the mother to wonder, would it have just been better if they had just punched and slapped each other about mid-Monday afternoon, and we could have achieved this level of peace a long time ago? An unconventional method of parenting, I know, but sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.

picture by krisdecurtis (Creative Commons License: Attribution, Non-Commercial)

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What Was Lost Has Now Been Found

Remember the lost boomerang story? How Jacob and his friend Josh threw his boomerang up into a tree and it got stuck it and we staged a late-night boomerang rescue? How I gave the boomerang up as forever lost and instead mused about parenting dilemmas involved in such childhood "traumas"?

Well, the good news of the week is that the boomerang has been found. Jacob and Josh were walking across the schoolyard this week and saw some boys playing with it. I suppose it fell out of the tree with all those fall leaves, like some kind of dream gift from the sky to a group of young schoolboys. Actually, it's quite amazing that it didn't get confiscated before Jacob and Josh spotted it, since boomerangs aren't your usual accepted playground toy, but nevertheless, there it was.

Jacob has to go through some clever identification questions to gain it back ("Where is it from? How much did it cost?"), but finally he convinced them it was his, and brought it home.

Really, with this end result it turned out to be the best of all scenarios: boomerang was trapped, parents made an effort to rescue boomerang, boomerang remained lost and child dealt with loss of boomerang, boomerang shows up later and is found.

Truly, all is well again in Boomerang World.

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A Foot on Both Paths

Last Tuesday Jason and I staged a Boomerang Rescue. This came about after Jacob had been playing up at the school yard with his friend Josh with the boomerang that he got as a souvenir from Disneyworld last year. Yes, I was also a little worried about them throwing a boomerang around, but fortunately they foresaw this danger and wrapped it in a bandanna for protection. Actually, we all know that this would be no protection at all, but considering how hard it is to throw a boomerang correctly, I wasn't too worried about it.

The unfortunate news was that the boomerang, powered by the strong arm of an 11-year old and aided by a very gusty wind, flew up into a tall tree and became stuck. The boys attempted to throw other things at it to get it down, but the end result was that Jacob came home very disconsolate that his prize souvenir was now stuck in a tree.

As always in these situations, a parent has several choices. You can always take the "Teach Them That Sometimes Boomerangs Get Stuck in Trees" path. My mom always summed this up with her "Balloons break, only the best players get to play, and you're too old to cry" speech. The other alternative as a parent is to take the "Try to Make Things Better Because Sometimes That's What Families Do" path. Whichever one you choose, there seem to be some kind of positive effects on the long-term development of the children, as they learn lots of important things from both.

Of course, with the first road, you get to stay in your warm house and watch TV. On the second road, you get to go out into a dark, blustery October evening with your flashlights and long, long ladder.

Standing in the schoolyard with my sweatshirt hood tied tightly around my face, watching Jacob and Jason up in the tree, I got to thinking: Will this be the night that Jacob will remember his parents going above and beyond to help him recover something that was important to him? Of course, then came the next thought: Or, will this be the night that Jacob remembers his father falling out of a tree and breaking some important body part? Then this thought: Or, will this be the night that Jacob remembers the police coming out to question his parents, as they in their hooded sweatshirts climbed up a long ladder in the dark into a tree right next to the school library where people were still meeting?

As it turns out, he won't remember the evening in any of those ways. We were not able to even locate the boomerang, much less climb up through the branches to get it down. However, as we headed back across the school grounds with our ladder and flashlights, Jacob seemed quite content with the situation. In a way, we were traveling down both roads. He learned that sometimes things get stuck, and life manages to continue on just fine - the sting of losing something good does eventually fade. But at the same time, he learned that sometimes families do go above and beyond to try to make it right. Even if they fail, they do try.

Perhaps sometimes having a foot on both paths is the best path of all.

photo by Luis Beltrán (Creative Commons License: Attribution, Non-Commercial)

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