Explosion games....

Dark nights, castles, swords, dark knights with glowing eyes that shoot things out of their eyes. There are two teams, a castle team, and a team to destroy the castle, but they will all lose because of the evil knights. They are in a desert and there are crocodiles. There are lots of trap doors.

This is a game Ian is acting out. It has lots of explosions and other sounds. When Ian plays this game, he walks and jumps and leaps back and forth. This game is all in his head and he plays it by himself. He doesn't like to be interrupted and he doesn't like to tell you what he is playing. Today, he was willing to share.

Ian often has these little games that he re-enacts. They always involve fighting and they always involve explosions. The characters have changed over the years. At first it was pirates, but now it is bad guys. Ian is obsessed with dying and death. Why? Where does he get this?

Some of you may be thinking from TV or a scary movie. But we don't let the kids watch such stuff. For a long time, the kids thought the only kid channel was PBS. We encouraged that idea. Then they discovered Nick and Disney. I always sit with them when they are watching a new show and if it has any violent themes, it goes off. Recently we have had to take away all TV from Ian.

He was obsessed about monsters. Monsters were real and monsters were under his bed. Most kids have this fear. It's normal. However, Ian went beyond what the typical kid believed. Strategies that we used for Kristin did not work with him. Strategies that work with most other kids did not work. When his doctor at Children's told him that there were no such things as monsters, Ian told the doctor that he wasn't the right kind of doctor to know that for sure. Smart kid. Ian was also having horrible nightmares. We decided that we needed to take away all TV. The only thing he is able to watch is Sponge Bob. For a long time, I didn't even let him watch that. I thought it was pure nonsense. However, the more I watched it, the more I liked it. So I let the kids watch it.

I'm not much of a fan for the TV. Neither is Tim. We are pretty strict with the TV and what the kids watch. There are many times I threaten to get rid of the TV. I think our lives would be a lot nicer and relaxing without that thing. We encourage the kids to pursue other activities and we try to spend time together as a family either playing games or working on puzzles. It's a lot more fun that way.

We still don't know where Ian gets the materials for his games. He's got to pick them up somewhere. Maybe from other children. Some days, I can get him to stop completely and do something else, but today no such luck. He couldn't seem to quit. He was so loud too! I couldn't even think. Ian did his explosion game at home and at the soccer field. He spent a lot of time today doing that.

Ian had been on a SSRI. We just took him off of them yesterday. Ian reacts badly to SSRI's. We have tried two and the doctors have decided they don't work with Ian. I think the reason for all the explosion games, is because of the SSRI. It will take a few days for the effects to wear off. A couple more days of heavy duty explosion games.... I think I can handle that. Does anyone have some ear plugs?