Building a City to Save the World

Yesterday, Benji had a playdate with a friend he originally met 2.5 years ago, when he was in 3-year-old preschool at Ludlow-Taylor. He and J always enjoy hanging out, and this was no exception. They play really nicely together and--so importantly--they disagree really well!  For example, I overheard this conversation:

B: Let's make Spiderman (J's action figure) be the bad guy!
J: Noooo!
B: It's just pretend, he's not really a bad guy.
J: No, because then I would lose the fight.
B: We could have a tie.
J: We need more good guys than bad guys.

They continued discussing how the good guys/bad guys fight would go without Spiderman being a point of conflict.J was at our house for over 2 hours, and this was how every single disagreement proceeded. They would disagree, discuss it for about 10 seconds, then move on to something else. No fights. No winding each other up. No hurt feelings. FREAKING AMAZING.

For some reason, they also bring out each others' best judgment. One of our living room futons is still opened up flat from a previous guest's visit, and they were doing somersaults on it. Benji decided that he was going to  stand in J's path, wait until J started the somersault, then jump out of the way. J talked him out of that by pointing out that Benji might fall on the floor while jumping and get hurt. Later on, I heard Benji saying to J about something else, "No, that's a bad idea. Someone might get hurt."

This is the SAME Benji who seems to follow most of his other friends into all sorts of bad ideas that get him into trouble. I've even worked with him and suggested plans (e.g. "let's get ice cream" or "let's drive the car without seatbelts") to make him assess the plan and respond out loud with "okay, let's do it" or "no--that's a bad idea."

Did I mention how much I love J?

Also overheard:  "Let's build a city to save the world." That's what they're doing in the photo below.

--Victoria