He is wanted for transgressions against humanity. His alleged crime spree includes such offenses as touching, being “weird,” “totally annoying” and, on occasion, “looking at me funny.” He is a master of disguise and even in the midst of an offense may appear sweet, sincere and wholly innocent. He is impervious to solitary confinement and his recidivism rate is high.

 He is a ten-year-old big brother.   

He lives, or so I am told, to make his little sister miserable. The victim further claims that I have “always liked him better.”  

When brought to trial his defense is both simple and swift. He makes counterattacks against his alleged victim. Apparently, he feels the same way about her. 

He further contends “I always side with her.” 

And me without my black and white referee’s jersey and whistle.  

Snap. If you felt the faintest quiver of a vibration not unlike a small earthquake recently, it was merely my last nerve snapping. This after two non-stop hours of “stop touching me!” “Mo-om he’s looking at me!” “STOP!!! Stop it! STOP ITTTTTT!”  

I can buy that sibling rivalry is “normal”, but to what extent before it constitutes a felony?  

I have had to point out to my eldest child on more than one occasion that one of the benchmarks for my success as a parent was assisting his survival to adulthood. My success in this endeavor was not looking promising as he had his little sister quite nearly over the edge.  

You can poke, prod, tease, torment and tickle-torture her but there is one thing you simply cannot, must not, do. 

You must not mess with her stuffed dog. His name is Chips and he is her favorite. She loves him madly and wants only the best for him. He sleeps with her at night, and spends his days either accompanying her to school or, on occasion, lounging around on the sofa awaiting her return. He is small, perhaps eight inches in length, and weighs just a tad more than air. He is light, compact, and one would think, easy to avoid. 

To our son, her big brother, he is, of course irresistible. The boy must mess with that stuffed dog every single solitary chance he gets. Chips, as you can imagine, makes a marvelous football.  

He is a good boy. Sweet, sensitive, caring. We get compliments on him all the time I swear. Why then, does he get this gleam – almost a glint really – in his eye and set his sights on tormenting his sister so often?  

Why does she, conversely, continue to rise to the bait? 

Therein lies the eternal question: Which came first? “She started it!” or “He touched my stuff!” 

Theory. One fateful day when all the yelling in the world wasn’t working, I theorized that the boy provokes her purely out of boredom and the enjoyable predictability of getting his sister’s goat. If attention is the goal, I reasoned, then what if his sibling simply refused to take the bait? Wouldn’t that basically disarm the situation? Good to know I hadn’t wasted that semester I spent sleeping through Child Psych 101 after all!  

Thus armed with my newly formed “better parenting through psycho-babble” mindset, I was fairly chomping at the bit for the sibling rivalry games to begin. Forget getting in touch with my inner child. I was going to talk some sense into my outer children. It seemed wise to start with the seven year old. They tend to be more gullible at that age.  

Predictably soon after, our golden girl came raving into the kitchen, temper flaring so hot she nearly had steam coming out of her ears. “He’s making that noise again and he knows I hate it!” “He keeps humming louder just to BUG ME!”  

I was so ready for this.   

“Well honey does that make you FEEL like he doesn’t respect your wishes? Do you FEEL like he needs to listen to what matters to you and take your feelings into consideration? Do you feel like you might want to sit down and discuss it when you’ve had time to calm down and not react in anger?” 

Eyes wide she gazed in amazement (at my obvious wisdom no doubt). She stood, completely disarmed and, quite frankly, distracted from her hatred of her brother just moments before (see how good I am? I should write a book!).  

Then she said the words that made me really feel me merit as a mother:  

“No, Mommy. That makes me FEEL like hurting him!”  

Hey, I tried. 

And, for the record, she started it.  

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We are gathered here today, to share our fond memories of Play-Doh and bid it a final farewell. Play-Doh has always been an integral part of our family’s home life. We spent many carefree days, sitting around the table, employing our dear Play-Doh in the art of mess-free sibling bonding. Our kids would spend hours, yes hours, sculpting it into various shapes of the imagination. Miraculously, they never fought while in the company of Play-Doh. It had some innate peace evoking quality that seemed to bring the kids together in one harmonious quest to build the perfect art form. I will never be able to explain how it was able to do this. No other object, art supply or over the counter medication educational television program sedated my naturally crazy children long enough to allow them to get along with their siblings, the way that Play-Doh did. It was pure magic in the form of modeling compound.

As the children grew, their creations became more magnificent. The time that they spent with their friend, Play-Doh, became increasingly productive and educational. The kids would fashion literary characters and play out scenes from their favortie stories. Sometimes, we would have contests to see who could mold the most interesting abstract picture or fantastical creature. It was quality family time at its cheapest finest. Most days, however, I took advantage of the battle free period to do some blogging chores. It was the only time that I could do anything without being constantly summoned to mediate an argument or stop a kid from bludgeoning his brother’s face. There was something so stress relieving in watching the kids scamper to get the Play-Doh from its designated spot in the art cabinet. It was the greatly appreciated granting of God’s permission to be lazy productive in an area of my life that did not entail threatening persuading seven kids into taking a nap, in order to do so.

Sadly, those days are over. We knew that Play-Doh would not be around forever. It was not the death that shocked me; it was the way in which it went that really left me at a loss for words. I had always imagined pre teen kids telling me that they no longer were interested in sculpting the vividly colored dough, because it was no longer cool and did not require batteries. I thought that, surely, we had a few good years left with our dear friend. Today was not the day that I had ever pictured having to bag up its remains and lay them to rest in the big brown receptacle, outside. Alas, we know not the hour, nor the day that our children will outgrow us. For my family, it was today…the day that Trenton decided to take his knowledge of the human body and design a detailed replica of one of the most fascinating, yet taboo, parts of the male (complete with pubic hair.) His phallic creation was a sure sign that we could not prolong its departure from our home. The days of innocent sculpting and occasional sibling camaraderie are gone forever. We will miss you, Play-Doh. Your memory will live on in our hearts forever.

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