Now this time watch Daddy blow up the building

I really do have a blast playing with my daughter. She’s right at that fun age where she can run around and do things, she has good manual dexterity that allows her to maneuver blocks and other objects with her hands, she’s happy and energetic and full of life and laughs a lot, squeals with delight and jumps up and down clapping her hands at some new game that we just made up. But I swear I must be setting her up for some kind of violent streak in her future.

It’s not intentional. It never is. But somehow all our games end up turning violent. I mean, you know, violent in a cute, piggy-tailed, two-year-old girl kind of way, but violent nonetheless. I think it started around the time she finally figured out how to walk and then soon after, run. We started playing this game that we simply called “DING” where basically I would chase her around the apartment tickling her and yelling (you guessed it), “Ding!” every time I poked her. Well that quickly got boring for me and so I added an extra element to the game: a beach ball. Now instead of just chasing her around, I also chuck a beach ball at the back of her head and body in an attempt to knock her over. The beach ball in question is incredibly light and bounces off her with practically zero force. You could probably throw it at somebody with all your might and they’d barely feel it. I, of course, know this because I’ve thrown it off of Allison’s head with all my might and she only laughs harder. Really, the only time that thing knocks her over is if she happens to be rounding a corner and I catch her around the legs just right, causing her feet to get tangled in each other and down she goes.

We made up that game about a year ago and we still play it several times a week. And god forbid I should start chasing her empty handed. We’ll get about five seconds into it and she’ll stop, turn around and say, “Beach ball?”

When we play with blocks, we don’t try to build a tower as tall as we can so much as build a tower just tall enough so we can knock it over. Actually, now that I think about it, Allison is the one who started that one. Though again, it was probably my fault. A couple times she accidentally bumped the tower knocking it over and I exclaimed a big “Whoa!” which made her laugh, and so now the object of the game became to knock the tower as far across the room as possible.

A couple months ago we inherited a box of Matchbox cars and a box of plastic animals. We set the animals up on the coffee table and had about three minutes worth of fun making them walk around, drink water, eat food, climb Couch Pillow Mountain, etc. But then I got bored and honestly I could tell she did too. So it wasn’t long before we pulled out the Matchbox cars and started a new game called (I swear I’m not making this up), “Hit the Pig.” Basically we arrayed all the animals on the table with the pig figurine at the very end. The goal was to run the cars down the gauntlet and knock the pig off the other side. Each run begins with the war cry (again, you guessed it), “Hit the Pig!” Then I… WE send the cars charging down the track with the appropriate VROOM sound effects, and end the run with a resounding PAAAUUUGGHH as the car flies over the cliff and bursts into flames. Whenever we actually accomplish the goal of the game and “Hit the Pig,” we celebrate with a sadistic, “RREEEEEeeee….” as the pig plummets to his death.

Well now we’ve got new toys in the house again. Allison got a couple Little People playsets for her birthday last weekend: the Little People house and the Little People garage. I think I may have lasted a good twenty minutes this time around. I made the mommy push the baby around in the stroller, made the daddy sit at the computer and check his e-mail, put the older sister on the potty and had the little brother open and close the refrigerator a couple dozen times. In the garage I had the mechanic drive the car around to the gas pump and pretend to fill’er up. We made the cars go up the elevator and down the spiral ramp and drive into the oil change area a few times. But it wasn’t long before I had the mommy and daddy jumping off the roof, had the dog getting hit by the tow truck coming through the car wash, and had the baby stroller rolling off the table cliff. We pulled out the infamous Matchbox cars and had them make death defying jumps onto the top level off the garage, careen around the corner with appropriate tire squealing sound effects and then pile up with lots of smashing sounds at the bottom of the ramp.

I know Allison is entertained because she busts a big old gut every time we sit down (or run around) to play something. But man, am I setting her up for some sick fascination with violence where nothing is fun unless it involves mayhem and destruction? Honestly, I must admit I’m being more than a little melodramatic. While everything I have described is one hundred percent true without the least bit exaggeration, I truly don’t think I’m screwing her up in the least. If anything I think I’m giving her a harmless outlet for the violent impulses that, let’s face it, are present in every single one of us. I’ve always been a believer that kids need to play games that involve pretend killing people and breaking things. It allows obsolete evolutionary impulses to manifest themselves in a way where nobody actually gets hurt. As long as it’s tempered with a responsible adult making sure the kid understands the difference between make believe and real life then they should be just fine. My hope is that Allison will get out her aggressions on fake plastic people (and pigs) and not turn psycho on the real ones.

Of course that’s all assuming she even makes it to three years old without getting knocked down the stairs during a particularly intense round of DING.