My oldest son doesn't always trust
me. In fact, he's often downright scared of things I ask him to do and will
flatly turn me down. Lately there's been two of these trust issues, as I see
them.
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| Oh he'll jump off inanimate objects to the cold, hard ground, but you put his loving father at the base to catch him and suddenly it's too scary. Trust issues? I'd say so. |
1. We have a bunk bed the kids line
up on top of and jump to me. The two girls, ages 5 and 2, will sky toward me
without a second thought, but our 6-year-old boy will stand there for 10, 20,
30 seconds as the girls and I coax him to jump. Sometimes Ms. Mischief will even try to push him off, which really freaks him (and me) out. Finally my arms get tired and I
let the girls have another turn. He gets upset that I move on, even though he
obviously doesn't trust me and/or himself enough to jump. Mostly me.
2. My wife has been teaching the
kids biology lately and we got talking about knee-jerk reactions. I set up a
tall food-storage bucket in the living room and started whacking the girls'
knees with a wooden sword to show them how it worked.
