Stepping out of the Game...Or Just Roar Like a Lion

My five year old son told me that some older kids were chasing him on the playground. The game was cops and robbers. He was always the robber and the other kids were always the cops. I asked him if it was fun, he said it was, but sometimes he got tired and wanted to stop, but he couldn't because the kids would then catch him and bring him to 'jail' (the sandbox). I tried to advise him that he could just stop playing. If he stopped running...they wouldn't chase him. "But mommy, they'll catch me and bring me to jail." "Don't go to jail" I said. "Go do something else". He looked at me like I was crazy. It was obvious to me that he could simply step out of the game, but to him that was unfathomable.

We grown-ups do this all the time. We get stuck in a story, a game, an argument that happens again and again with our spouse or sibling. We play our parts in the story. We feel it is inevitable. We respond in the same way we always did. We don't realize we could just stop playing the game.

I asked my son a few weeks later if those kids were still chasing him. "Sometimes" he said, "but I figured out how to make them stop when I get tired. I roar at them like a lion and they leave me alone." He did something unexpected, he broke the pattern, he changed the game. "Good for you" I said. "Good for you"