My son is currently going through a phase where snakes, sharks, and owls are all the first things he says when he meets new people. “Snakes are hunters. Owls are predators.” Not "I like sharks" but they are predators, and “snakes bite with venom and squeeze.” He loves to act it out, too. Open his mouth real wide and pretend to bite you, give you a real strong hug like he’s squeezing you, and chase you around like you’re one of his prey.
To be completely honest, at first this felt a bit unsettling. A 3-year-old pretending to kill me? 😳
As a girl mom for 6 years before having my son, this type of play was completely new. With my daughters, their pretend play was about tea parties and classrooms. They had rescue missions and elaborate social dramas between stuffed animals, but no one was hunted down. So when my son went full predator in the middle of the living room, some old, unexamined part of me thought, “Is this normal? Should I be redirecting this?”
I share that because a member wrote in this week with a version of the same moment, except hers came with a lot more guilt attached. Her son is turning 5 in October, and he's deep in a dinosaur phase. Before that it was machines, tractors, excavators, and harvesters. He has always preferred facts to stories. Nonfiction over bedtime tales.
She's been quietly censoring the dinosaur books, because most of them, especially the nonfiction ones, are graphic about how dinosaurs killed and were killed. She stopped the documentaries too, after she noticed his play getting rougher. He talks about hunting and killing now. When he plays dinosaur, he gets "into it," looking and sounding a little scary. Other kids aren't frightened exactly, but she's noticed them pause, watching him, sort of seeming unsure of what he's doing.
Underneath all of it is a question she asked almost in passing, but it's the one quietly fueling her fears: Is something wrong with him? Is it my fault for letting him watch and read this type of content? Will other kids think he's weird?
I want to start with a reframe I’ve had to tell myself now that I have a son:
Different doesn’t mean bad, dangerous or wrong. Different means it’s unfamiliar, which naturally makes us a bit nervous as parents, especially when we’re imagining others judging him for being different.
