Kids play games

Kids crack me up. I love it though at times the very spirit in them that I love absolutely drives me to despair as well.

My two boys are relatively standard kids. Both of them are capable of being absolutely fantastically good and lovely. Both of them are capable of being really very naughty. Everything is a game to my lads, and I think that’s one of the bits that I love. The innocent outlook on life that means every single thing that they do is a game, I can vaguely remember being like that and I miss it.

Often the game is ‘making Dad loose his temper’, or ‘getting my brother into trouble, or ‘who can make Mum shout the loudest’ but still they are games! Sibling rivalry is a game that takes up quite a shocking amount of their time. If they put as much effort into their careers when they start work as they do in trying to get the other one into trouble then I shall wind up a very proud Father!

The other day I could hear quite a lot of noise coming from their room. Jamie ( my youngest ) was making a din clearly very upset and then shouting in pain. I’ve learnt not to rush up straight away on these occasions because you get hit by UFO’s zooming across the room. Suddenly Daniel appeared looking upset. “Jamie has been hitting me!” He surprised me with his almost believable account. “ No reason he was just punching me!” I’m not the fastest thinker in the world but even I could see that this story wasn’t working too well. Not a lot of investigation later and I discovered that Daniel had been deliberately taunting and provoking Jamie until he had cracked and tried to attack his older Brother; Daniel could then ‘justifiably’ defend himself for a while before coming down and trying to score double points for getting Jamie in trouble as well. This style of Brotherly love is not new it has been going on for generations.

Everything is a game though. Ask them to tidy up and they will become robots that can only move sideways and pick things up to the sounds of hydraulics. They don’t just go on the swing for a bit – the swing is a rocket and has to have a full pre-launch checklist performed on it first before they will ’take off’ and swing. You can’t not love somebody that when you ask them to clear up the pile of Lego they had been playing with at bath time, takes 5 minutes to build a special Lego scoop so that he can pretend to be a crane putting the Lego into the box.

I do wish they would stop the making Dad lose his temper game because I always seem to lose. Even with that in mind though you can’t help but love them, even when they are at their worst and you are at your maddest. They are kids and that is what kids do – childhood is a game and they only get about 12 years to play it before things start getting real.