Falling and Throwing

Man, I have been falling down on the job in my posting. (Wonder where they got that phrase "falling down on the job" from? Hope it wasn't from one of those high rise window washer guys.) I promise to do better.

Anyway, this is what happened today. Last week, we had to take the boys to the dentist for a checkup and Jakob had to get a filling in one of his teeth (bottom, back, left hand side). Well, this morning, he said his tooth was hurting, so we called the dentist. They told us to come in this afternoon and so there we were, in the dentist's waiting area.

Now, I love this group of dentists. They are all so very nice to the boys and the boys just love them. In the waiting area (which is HUGE), they have a window on the far left side so you can look in at the patients having their teeth cleaned if you want. Wonderful idea for anxious parents and anxious kids (i.e. my family). Directly in front of this window is a little play area for kids. It has a couple of plastic tables and chairs, books,a mini-slide, a little basketball goal and a couple of those really soft Nerf-like basketballs. Okay, cool.

So, Lukas and Jakob were playing over in that area when two bigger kids came in (maybe 6 and 7 years old.) They started throwing one of the little basketballs at each other in a little game of inside dodgeball. Not too much running, so no big deal. Well, Lukas decided he wanted to play with them. And seeing as how these other 2 boys were brothers, they did what brothers all over the world do. They decided to play a game of keep away. One of the boys would have the ball and ask Lukas "Hey, kid....do you want it...do you want it?" and when Lukas would make a move for it he would throw it to his brother. Okay, no big deal. Guys all over the place do this. Lukas played along and dealt with it fine for a few minutes. Then he started getting a little irritated with them. I was wondering to myself..."I wonder what Lukas is about to do?" I found out in a second.

The brothers were standing with their backs to the wall. One of them had the ball. Lukas was standing just a couple of feet away by one of the small plastic tables with the 2 plastic chairs. The boy with the ball held it out and said "Hey, kid....do you want it...do you want it?"

At which point Lukas picked up one of the plastic chairs, held it over his head and said "Do you want it? Do you want it?" and proceeded to chunk the chair at the boy. Of course, Grover immediately took him to the car and talked to him about how inappropriate that was, etc.

I didn't say anything when the boys were playing keepaway with Lukas for 2 reasons:
1. Kids do that and sometimes you just have to learn to deal with that kind of thing if no one is getting hurt.
2. I wanted to see how Lukas would handle it. He handled it pretty well at first.....then of course, there was the whole chair thing, which gave me a pretty clear indication of his patience level.

I have had the conversation with him about how to respond appropriately in a situation like that in the future. He listened. Hopefully he retained the information and no more chairs will be thrown in the future.

Did he hit either one of the boys with the chair? Of course not.........they ducked. Smarter than they looked, evidently.

Peace allllll.....................

P.S. Jakob was fine.....turned out the filling was a little too thick and they had to file it down some. So a good day was had by all!