Budding Evil Genius

My 5 yr-old son has really shown a propensity for manipulating his brother and test his parents' boundaries. The other day as we are leaving to take his older brother to school right before we get to the door he says uh-oh and pulls a lego star wars figure out of his pocket and very visibly puts it on the kitchen counter. His brother was already in the car. About three minutes into the trip he tells me that his brother has a star wars lego figure in the car, knowing that house toys are not allowed in the car with out parental approval.

I get on his brother's case about knowing he is not allowed to bring toys, particularly very small easily breakable ones that they love, in the car or outside of the house, and I point out that his brother remembered to leave the toy he was playing with at home.l

I forgot to have him hand the toy to me, so of course he took it into school anyway, and let some kid look at it at the end of the day and lost some rare character's light saber. After getting his teacher to unlock the classroom and let us look for it, to no avail, I tell him this is why you shouldn't bring collectible toys out of the house, and he says, "I wish I never listened to my brother." I ask why and he says that his brother told him they should sneak the lego figures into the car so they could play with them.

So he told him to bring it in the car, had me watch him not bring his in the car and told on his brother for bringing it in the car, all in a ten minute span. Sounds like a set up, right.

I asked my therapist, who has written a number of books on children, if she thinks it was possible that my 5 yr-old actually planned this out to set up his brother? She said yes particularly if he has done anything like this in the past. They both tell on each other all the time, and he has manipulated his older brother into adding him in a number of sneaky endeavors, the biggest of which usually involve snacks, like discovering a hidden cache of gummy fruits that were destined for birthday party gift bags and getting his brother to open them because at three years old he did not have the strength to do so himself. There was also the time where he showed his brother that they could eat Easter candy without permission if they hide the wrappers, again he needed his brother's help opening the candy.

So yeah, I think my little guy is capable of hatching a plan to get his older brother in trouble. Since then I told my 2nd grader to just tell me if his brother tries to get him involved in any other schemes that he fears will get him in trouble and sure enough almost once a day that little mind is hatching some devious plan to advance his goal of world domination over candy, toys and video games.

A side note to his thinking ahead, this morning he asked me if we were late to pre-school and I said not really and though he usually is pushing to make it on time, he seemed bummed, so I asked him, why did you ask and he said, "I want to be late, if we are late to school that means I don't have to go for as long." I said wow, yes you are technically correct.