My son has started talking about killing himself at the age of 4. "Kill myself, I'm going to kill myself, just kill myself" etc. Once he figured out it upset me and that he's not allowed to say that, he kept doing it, of course. On top of that he's been trying to kill bugs, even ones that are where they're supposed to be, like an ant crawling outside (this is a recent change in behavior).
I've been talking to him about it like it's a serious thing, it doesn't mean what he thinks it does, dead means gone forever, it makes us cry when someone is dead, etc. I made him watch Charlotte's Web (made it through about half). We talked about protecting those that are smaller and weaker, like superheroes do. Etc.
So this morning he asked me if he could watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. This is when I realized that when Lucy wants to hold the football for Charlie Brown so she can pull it away at the last second, he says something like, "you just want me to miss and fall on my back and kill myself." I cannot begin to express my relief, and also how kind of funny it was. My son looked at me and said, "He's not allowed to say that."
Of course, it's the season, so he's probably watched it a hundred times at home, and I know they showed it to the kids during the after school program too. So I had this big discussion with him that probably went mostly over his head about what it means to exaggerate, and not to talk about killing, and if he says it again, he won't be allowed to watch CHARLIE BROWN anymore. Smh.
And the bug thing, his teacher told me this morning, came from another kid who is not with him anymore, who was a real vicious bug killer, and he's just mimicking that behavior as well. I of course, with all this killing, thought my son was having a major problem, but the two things are probably not even connected in his mind.
