Just hit her back!

Porter was getting all of his markers and paint perfectly set up so he could enjoy craft time. Charlotte comes over to do what she does best, destroy Porter's perfect arrangement. If she just glances in the direction of where he is sitting, and he knows what she is up to, he will start screaming bloody murder. This gets her even more revved up to complete her path of destruction. She runs over there with her arm cocked back in the "I'm going to hit you" position, and in 2 seconds flat she performs her perfect follow through. Porter is still screaming, but just taking it like the sweet little dude he is. Never on earth would he think of hitting her back. I was across the room with my hands full of something and couldn't get over to the slugfest in time. Porter looks at me with this look in his eyes like "what do I do?!?!" so I say, "Porter, just hit her back." This is not our conventional approach to problem solving, but I kinda felt sorry for the little guy getting beat up by his little sister, and quite honestly we go with other forms of discipline to get her to stop hitting with little to no luck so I thought that maybe that might work. If she got whacked back just one time maybe she would STOP!

Charlotte, still slugging away, Porter, still taking it, looks at me again with those eyes. I say, "Porter, just hit her back!" He looks at me funny and takes his hands and turns her around and hits her on the back! He had no idea of this concept of retaliation and took my words quite literally. He whacks her on the back and she whacks him back. He looks at her again, turns her around, and hits her on the back once again. By this time I had cleared my hands and ran over to stop the madness, all the while dying laughing.

I love that my sweet little dude would never even think to hit his baby sister. Good thing because we will not be using this method in the future. Apparently that just fuels Charlotte's fire to hit harder. We will be going back to time out!