Money matters and dumb, little criminals

I will start off with: I LOVE my children.

Deeply. I find the song "Yellow" by Coldplay reflects my feelings for them, especially the line "for you I'd bleed myself dry."

But as it turns out, I don't think I'll need to do it myself.

The other day my older daughter wanted to watch Star Wars - Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back with me. That is cool. To me. So we watched the movie through again, I think it's my third time watching it with her, and maybe her fifth viewing overall.

That ought to cure the dating problem in a few years. She'll only have looser nerd suitors who I can impress with my brute strength and if that doesn't work skool them in UT deathmatch.

After watching the movie she was inspired to play the "Lego Star Wars" video game we have (more info here). Why not, I let her. Her little sister soon arrived home and joined her, sitting and watching the game next to her. They sat nicely and played while I joined my wife in the kitchen to make dinner.

That's not a euphemism, I was really helping thaw the meat.

Well while we were at it I heard from the next room "Shoot it. Kill the kangaroo!" What caused me to investigate was it being my younger daughter, only five years old, calling for the untimely death of non-combatant animals.

I should send her on a sealing. She'd be cheering for the clubbers while Greenpeace would have trouble reconciling the cute child yelling for the death of the cute animals.

I came back to the kitchen but continued to listen. Here is a rough transcript of the two of them:

"Kill him"
"I did"
"Look at all the money you got for him. Shoot another."
"Die Die DIE! Ooo, money!"

I was wondering if there was a crack in the game to unlock a Soldier of Fortune mod. I figured I should do SOMETHING before they take this attitude to school and cause a lockdown. So I go in there and ask "So you just kill anything in the game?"

Both said "Yep!"

Ok, not working. From the good old unwritten parenting handbook I turned to the 'raise it to the logical extreme' page. "What about Mommy, would you shoot her?"

The younger one got the point right away, she yelled "NO!". The older said:

"No. She doesn't have any money anyway."

Oh my. Not good.

I did receive a bit of good news tonight though. If my older daughter is the muscle, that would make the younger one the brains.

On my fourth trip upstairs with her tonight I walked into her room with her. She ran to her bed and said "I don't have anything in my bed."

Ok. That was weird. It turns out she's one of those 'dumb criminals' you hear about. Of course I checked out her bed. Of course she was disciplined for lying.

I'm still not sure to make of all this. A friend once remarked that I raise my girls as boys, I countered that I'm raising them as children. We were both wrong. Apparently I'm raising little hitmen. I hope there isn't a "marksmanship" badge in brownies.