Taking the Scenic Route

Zane and Zora have been at odds lately. Zora is suddenly very interested in the computer, so I hook her up with Noggin or Disney online. Zane kept trying to shut it off, which of course caused Zora to scream like crazy. Every time I would step away (my computer is near the kitchen so I can watch her play while I am doing dishes or working in there), and Zane kept shutting it off. I started realizing after a while that it he wasn’t trying to be mean, it seemed almost driven, from an uncontrollable place inside him, to close up her windows.

I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on, until later in the day when I was opening up a window for her on Zach’s computer. Suddenly, a seemingly unrelated outburst came to mind. Zane had yelled, in the middle of doing something totally unrelated, something that sounded like “FOX” several times. I couldn’t figure out what he wanted until hours later when I was looking at Zach’s desktop and realized that I tend to automatically open everything in IE (because one of my message boards doesn’t come up on any other browser), and Zach tends to open everything in Mozilla Firefox, which has a fox as the desktop icon.

So, I tested my new theory. I closed all the windows in IE and opened up her Noggin or Disney in Firefox and walked away. Low and behold, when he went and looked over her shoulder this time, he just watched a bit and went back to what he was doing.

Our 6 year old hates Internet Explorer and loves Mozilla Firefox. I think he is now an official nerd.