Give it back. Now.

Alex* and Steven*, both six, came to me at work yesterday, arguing all the way. I watched them stomp angrily toward me, each clutching an action figure in their hands.

They both started talking to me at once.
"He wasn't using it!"
"Alex took my..."

"Okay guys," I said, "I can only listen to you one at a time. Let's try to talk about this and see if we can figure something out, okay? Now, Steven, what happened?"

"Well, Alex took something from me and I want it BACK!"

I turned to Alex. "Alex?"

"Well, he wasn't even USING it and I wanted it!"

"Okay, guys, here's how it works here. We share our things, and we don't take things away from another person. So Alex, please give it back to Steven."

"But he wasn't USING it!"

"I understand that, but we just don't take things from others here. You need to give it back, and then go wash for snack. We're having Sun Chips today!"

Alex gave a huge sigh. Totally bummed. He turned to Steven, pointed his action figure at the one in Steven's hands, and made this sound. "Shoooooooooosh."

"Okay, Steven. There's your super powers back."

:::snort:::

I swear, the kids crack me up every day.


*of course I would never use the real name of someone else's child on my blog...