King of the Mountain

So we never used to take Little Guy to the park much --even the nicest parks in our old Central Valley town had their ghetto element. On one of our last trips to the park there some nice teenage thugs threw their pit bull off the top of the playground structure and then laughed as the poor thing crawled away in pain.

Little Guy also never went to day care (just Grandma's house) and has just generally never gotten to be around other kids very much.

So it's not very much of a surprise that now there's a bit of an adjustment. Now we live by nice parks, populated by nice families and lots of young kids. And Little Guy just wants them all to know one thing...stay the hell away from his stuff.

It started off with the steering wheel on the playground. On 3 different occasions he slapped at other kids who came up and tried to use it when he was.

Then the other evening he took his possessiveness to a whole new level. There were 2 other similarly aged kids already there when we arrived, but they all happened to be off the structure at the moment. He climbs up gleefully and runs around in general merriment until he notices one of the other kids starting to climb the steps.

"NO NO NO no NO!" He yells as he runs across the bridge to the top of the steps. She freezes for a moment. I tell him to share and blah blah blah. She starts climbing again. He starts with the "No no no" again and as she gets closer he tries to hit her. Because apparently the whole structure is his now.

Oy. I know he'll learn in time...and we'll keep trying. But it's a little hard to make friends with moms at the park when your kid keeps assaulting theirs.