Sensitivity training for a preschool critter getter

My grandson Max is a critter getter. If it flies, creeps, rolls, crawls or even drags itself along on a thin layer of slime, it’s likely to end up as a specimen impounded for closer examination — or worse.

Max is 3 and getting older, bigger and quicker by the second, and his skill at finding, capturing and detaining creatures is growing exponentially. It is a dangerous time to be a living organism in my daughter’s backyard.

It’s not that the boy seeks to harm things. He mostly just lacks a certain finesse in his collection methods and handling of the specimens during scientific examination. To put it more bluntly, the boy is a bit of a brute.

We’re working on this, mind you. Max has shown a bit of progress as I work to instill in him a deep and abiding respect for life, but sometimes he defaults to that irrepressible boyhood urge to “find out what’s inside this thing.”

There was a time when every bug on the driveway was destined to become a smear on the bottom of a size 7C shoe sole, but we’ve moved beyond that now. At this point the boy seeks first to ascertain that the bug is, in fact, an ant — and then he squishes it.

Of late, I’ve been trying to introduce the idea of passive observation, whereby we simply look at a slug, spider, butterfly or what have you and allow it to carry on with its business. At this writing those lessons have gotten nowhere. To be passively observant requires one to actually possess at least a tiny modicum of restraint — a skill which the child seems to lack entirely at this point.

Hoping for the next best thing, we are working with Max on the idea of gentle capture and living release. You know, the old, “Sure you can keep this critter in a can for a moment or two, but after that, you need to let him go close to where you found him so he can go back to his mommy and daddy.” Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the closest a toad gets to “where you found him” is in the living room behind the couch. We’ll get there eventually.

I thought I was making some real progress the other day as Max and I spent half an hour chasing butterflies at an outside festival without a single casualty while the rest of the family did their own thing nearby. When he found the delicate shed of a cicada clinging to the bark of a maple tree, I suggested we could carefully carry it to show Mommy and Daddy.

Max thought about this for a long moment, gently rolling the translucent husk of the bug around in his little hands. Then, in the most thoughtful and innocent tone, he said, “Or I could step on it!”

Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John at jlorson@alonovus.com.