my son the dinosaur....

[Graceoc]

My 3 year old DS is OBSESSED with dinosaurs, and has been for about 6 months now. I have always tried to be supportive of his interestes, and he has lots of books about dinos, knows them all by their correct name, has a large collection of all kinds of dinos - but my problem is that he wants to BE a dino all the time!

I would say about 50% of our day he acts like a dino - he literly has this transformation where his back is hunched over, he has a mean look on his face and he head butts and roars at everyone and everything. I have tried to talk to him about being a nice dino - and he will stop for a few minutes, but then he is right back at it. I have to say by 5pm I have about had it with the roaring.....I have been able to get it somewhat undercontrol at home, but out is a different story..

We have started going out and about in our new town (moved 3 months ago) and everywhere we go he will roar at other kids. I have tried talking with him and telling him that not all kids want to play dino and that he should ask first - but of course he INSISTS that they DO want to play....which I know is not true. In fact at my last LLL meeting he was roaring and clawing in the air at some poor little girl and she was very upset and said he was mean ...... DH thinks he goes into dino mode as a form of defensive mechanisim in strange situation...which could be part of it, but I just do not know what to do..

Part of me just want to break away from all things that are dino related - but I know that would just break his heart....plus he is very clever. The other day he was roaring and I told him he was not allowed to be a dino anymore.....so 5 minutes later he is roaring again and when I stopped him he looked at me with complete innocence and said "But I'm not being a dino mommy, I am being a lion" : Oh the joys....

Sorry to ramble on so long - but any suggestions? I would really like to see more of my little boy instead of a T-Rex (even if he insists that he is a 'nice one')

[veggiewolf]

My DS went through a long period of this - stalking around the house like T-Rex, chasing the cats, and roaring terrible roars. We did a couple of things to calm it down without crushing his need to be imaginative:

(1) We made a rule that T-Rex could only stalk and roar in the yard, and that the house was for quiet herbivores. He quickly "turned into" a brachiosaur and started swishing his "tail" around the house, but there was no more roaring.

(2) When we were outside in the yard, he was aloud to roar and stomp as much as he wanted, but only if he was playing with people who also wanted to play dinosaur, or if he was playing by himself. He soon learned it was more fun to roar with friends than at them.

(3) We bought a membership to the Academy of Natural Sciences, and went weekly. We chose a new dinosaur for him to be every week, and eventually he threw over being a dino for being a paleontologist instead. The Academy has a section where one can watch the paleontologists actually clean the bones - once he discovered that section, he was hooked.

HTH