Growing Up Can Be Hard

Jasper is a sensitive kid.  Not sure how he got this way, but I’m pretty sure at least some of it is hard wired.  He frustrates easily – always has, and now that he has a little brother who is motoring around and getting into his biz-ness, he is all the more frustrated. 

Multiple times each day we hear, “No, Benjamin, that’s MINE!”  Yep, it gets old.  So, in order to teach sharing, we’ve instituted the rule that he cannot utter those words (“No, that’s mine”).  If he doesn’t want to share, he must come up with a different way of saying it. 

• For example, “Benjamin, I’m playing with it now.  You can play with it later.” 
• Or, for those times when Benjamin is rightfully playing with something Jasper decides he wants to play with, he can institute a trade.  He can bring Benjamin another toy and ask if he can swap. 

Most of the time Benjamin obliges, but sometimes he doesn’t. 

If Jasper says, “No, that’s mine!” he loses whatever toy is in dispute for the rest of the day.  If he swipes something from Benjamin, same thing.  Jasper knows this but of course forgets most of the time until we’re well into the day and he’s lost the fifth or sixth toy.  At that point in time, when I take the toy away, put it on the dining room table and tell him he can have it tomorrow, he often will say (while choking back tears), “Mom … it’s kinda hard to share.”  Oh, too precious!  It is hard, isn’t it?  And yet it’s easy, too – from our perspective.  Makes me think of how God must look down on us and think how sad it is that we get our panties all in a bind about sharing, and it reminds me as I tell him … “I know, sweetie.  That’s why we have to practice.”   

Tonight we went shopping at Target to get toys for our Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child shoebox.  We were buying trucks for little boys, and I had to tell Jasper over and over again that the trucks were not for him but for little boys who have no toys.  I asked him how many trucks he has.  He said he couldn’t count them.  I agreed and said “you have LOTS!  But little boys who live far away don’t have any.  These trucks are for them.”  I didn’t know if it would sink in.  But as I was throwing together dinner when we got home, as I was letting both boys pacify themselves although they were tired and hungry, Jasper asked if he could get out the trucks for the other boys – the ones who live far away and don’t have any trucks.  He sat the boxes on the kitchen table, and they “watched” him eat his dinner.  He talked about the van, the flatbed, the tow truck, etc. but in the end, he still talked about them being for the other boys who don’t have any trucks. 

Hopefully his sensitive side can be guided to be full of compassion, too.