I think my 4 yr old has some agressive tendancies. I don't know what clued me in, or wait! Maybe I do:

"BLAM!!!" he's holding a water gun that looks like a weapon Marvin the Martian would love.
"Hey buddy! Whatcha doing?!"
"BLAM!!!" actually - he's pretty good at vocalizing sound effects!
"Are you pretending to squirt me with water!?"
"no.... BLAM!!"
"Well - what are you doing?"
"I'm killing you... BLAMMITY BLAM!"
huh. what the heck did I do to him?? So here goes my Motherly answer: "Now sweetie. We don't kill people. It's not nice to kill people. Besides, Santa doesn't like it when little boys pretend to kill others. Killing isn't a nice thing at all." (see? I've got motherly advice!)
He pondered on this awhile, and then told me he wanted to be a policeman when he grows up. "Oh!" I said "That's a wonderful idea! Policemen are our friends!"
"Yes," he agreed "I'm going to be a policeman so I can kill people" (and you have to say it the way he does: keel
Again with the nurturing comments: "Oh no! Policemen don't kill us! We love policemen. They help us when we need help!".
Now he's stumped. "oh" then his face lit up. "Mommy! I want to be a BADGUY when I grow up. Just so I can kill people!" (Mental note... hide water gun)

"Ummmm... nope - you can't be a badguy, cause then Santa won't come visit, AND because then I wouldn't bake you cookies. Besides, if you kill people you have to go to jail. And when you go to jail, there are other badguys there, and they want to kill YOU. So there."

So now he's back to wanting to be either a fireman, a garbage man, or the ice cream man... and he's looking for his gun.

Anyway - a question to you moms (or dads) of boys... is this normal behavior?? (and I'm actually being serious...)

************* wait. I typed this earlier this morning. Then my dad sent me a link that I tacked onto the bottom of this post. Maybe... maybe, I found where the warlike attitude is coming from.

Cute Link