Getting a Grip on Reality

As you may already know, Graham loves dinosaurs, and he loves Dino Dan. He has been asking us for weeks if dinosaurs are real and if Dino Dan is real. We thought the dinosaur explanation was pretty straight forward, but the Dan one was kinda hard. Dino Dan is the first show that Graham has watched that is fictional but has live actors. In the show Dan sees dinosaurs outside but no one else in the show does. This fact has confused Graham even more because he thinks he should be able to see dinos outside even though they don't really exist.

Well, Nathan and I tried our best to explain the truth of the matter. Then Graham went through a phase of being kinda sad that he and Dan couldn't just hang out. He would say things like, "I wish Dino Dan was real," or, "Where does Dino Dan live, so I can visit him." Well, Nathan and I were starting to feel badly that we were ruining a little boy's fantasy. So, Nathan had an idea. He thought we should have Dino Dan mail Graham a vest like his. Of course, Miss Teacher took this project on and ran. First, I ordered a vest online. In the meantime, Graham went through the next phase of grieving: denial. All of a sudden, Dino Dan was living with us, camped out in Graham's room in his Buzz Lightyear tent. He decided that if he get the answer he wanted about Dino Dan's existence, he would just imagine him to be real.

Finally, the vest arrived and we did the whole thing up right. We went as far as ringing the doorbell so Graham had to retrieve the package off the front porch. After he opened the box and thought for a second, he said, "Maybe you guys were right. Maybe Dino Dan IS real." The fantasy lives!!

Tonight he put on his vest and reported on his Dino experiments in his dino field guide. Score one for mommy and daddy!

looking for dino behavior outside to log in his dino field guide

logging his experiment results in his field guide