The Superhero Education Program

My toddler is OBSESSED really REALLY likes cars. And monster trucks. And trains. And airplanes. And just about anything else on this planet that has a motor and two or four wheels. Which is great and everything. Super easy to buy for, takes nothing but a short walk to the fire station to entertain him for the rest of the afternoon.

Now this is all great and awesome, but it's hard to get him interested in ANYTHING else. I'd like to expand his horizons a little bit and get him into other things. Like moose hunting. Or robot fighting.

But since those are probably going to happen over my dead body until he is much older, I decided to start with baby steps. Like super-heroes. What little boy doesn't like super-heroes?

Luckily Netflix offers all sorts of episodes of Spiderman (the ones from the 80s and early 90s! Tubular dude!), Avengers and X-Men cartoons. We've watched some and I've tried to explain bad guys and good guys (he calls everyone bad guys). I cheer when the heroes beat up the bad guys. You know, try to get him excited. He'll watch it, but he doesn't care THAT much about the story. Probably because he doesn't understand story and narrative that much yet (according to his speech therapist). But he'll be sure to pick out EVERY.SINGLE car that appears on tv. 

We put in Spiderman (live action, 2002 release) today. He seemed to really like it. Until the bad guy shot the roof of the highjacked car out. 

"OH NOOOOO!!!!!! AWWWWW POOR CAR!!!! IT'S BROKEN!!!!!!!!!!!"

(tears ensue). 


It's really hard for me to keep my composure sometimes. The first time he did this, I laughed. Which he didn't appreciate. The next couple times I mumbled irritatedly "relax Buddy, it's NOT a big deal." Then the last time he did and seriously was crying over it, I snapped.


"Calen holy crap it DOES NOT MATTER it's just a car!!!! There are people BLEEDING beside the car you should be crying over them!"

Which of course wasn't the right thing to say. Because nothing is JUST a car to Calen. And if people are bleeding to death all you have to do is "kiss it better" and you are instantly healed. 

And off to playing with cars he goes. Spiderman is still on but since I announced that the cars in the movie don't matter, he's over it, and not interested anymore. Clearly I suffer from foot-in-mouth disease.

His other current obsession are these ridiculous American flag armbands that he insists on wearing all.the.time. This evening he was naked except for those armbands and his Captain America underwear (see? I'm even trying to influence how awesome superheroes are via under garments). So I brought out his red cape and mask that he NEVER wears and put them on him and told him he was SO HANDSOME and was a SUPERHERO CALEN and he could get BAD GUYS with it and was LIKE SPIDERMAN and that the cape would make him FLY if he ran fast enough.


Parenting lesson #1: Lying is necessary. The more extravagant, the more encouraged they are.

Calen of course thought it was AWESOME. And he went running through the house trying to fly (I think he forgot all about the bad guys and superhero and spiderman stuff, he was just trying to fly). But he's wearing it. And it's a start.


Baby steps people, baby steps.

Teaching Calen how to save the world, one kitchen at a time

(Disclaimer: No I do not intend on taking Calen moose hunting. No Calen is not suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from me announcing to him that people are bleeding or that the broken car isn't a tragedy. And no I don't lie to my kids ALL the time. Only most of the time. And yes I am extremely sarcastic especially when I'm writing. And yes you ARE stupid for believing all the extremities of this blog. That's why it's a blog, and not 100% reality.)

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