Mr. Scissors

Our second son loves scissors. He's never come out and said so, but he has regularly chopped things up. Often, he's not able to put words to what he does. But it seems there's something "moving him" to do it. Creativity?

He cut up a leather purse of mine and later insisted in front of a counselor that it would be no problem to sew it back up again and obviously We were the ones with the problem. Why wouldn't we just hand him a needle and he'd show us!

Once it wasn't just scissors - he took the clippers to his head and shaved the back of it bald. Then, he screamed for over four hours that he hadn't done it. Well, then who did? He was so convincing that we asked each of his siblings if they'd done it while he was asleep. Taking him for a walk by himself revealed the truth: yes, he'd turned on the clippers. Yes, he'd rubbed the clippers all over the back of his head. No, he didn't realize it would shave off all the hair wherever he'd rubbed them...

So, what kind of a job would you give such a child? Cutting the grass? He was so anxious to do that coveted chore that he took the mystery fluid sitting in a jug next to the garage and poured it into the lawn mower's oil pan. When that ended up smoking up the front yard, he washed it all out with the hose and water. His father has never forgiven him for that one!

He has a reasoning all his own when it comes to hacking away at things. On his adoption day, he wasn't able to express his mixed emotions. So, he cut up the trampoline - stabbing it repeatedly with a stick. He cut up his sisters' shirts because they had been "mean" to him. Cut up their panties and tied them in knots. In order to have ankle socks for sports, he cut the tops off of all his socks. Mr. Scissors now has quite a number of raggedy socks and he's sure COOL lookin'.