Crankiness and Secret Formulas

A couple weeks ago, Peter was really cranky. He got home from school and had a snack but he just wasn't able to play nicely. He was in Grady's face a bunch while they were playing; being rude and saying nasty things or alternately ignoring Grady as he tried to play. I couldn't figure out what the problem but since he couldn't fix it, I made him go write two "thankful cards". Here's what he wrote:

Obviously not a happy boy at the time. I didn't even look at the cards right away because I was in the middle of making dinner. Once I finally looked at them, I really had trouble keeping a straight face. Even after the cards, he still couldn't play nicely so I told him to go take a shower. He stomped off in tears and took his shower.

When he was done, I asked him what had been going on. He was really nervous and refused to tell me, but I kept asking. I couldn't do very much at the time because I was working on dinner, but he was staying close by anyway. Eventually, he walked away to the coffee table and was writing something.

He came back with a little strip of paper that said "you hurt my feelings". I guess he was nervous that I'd be upset if he said those words out loud. He was able to tell me that the hurt feelings were from being told to take a shower. But I had to explain to him what I really wanted to know was why he wasn't playing nicely, not why he started crying.

He gave me a nonchalant "oh, <this> happened at school" or something like that. Maybe it was that we couldn't go to Target to look at the thing he wanted right then. I don't remember exactly. I do remember that a hug seemed to fix the problem and he happily cut vegetables for me after all that.

It's been a complicated thing for me to figure out how to explain the difference between "I'm upset" and "you hurt my feelings". I understand his combination of the two, but there's some vital difference between feelings being hurt and him being upset with the consequence of me making him do something in response to his actions.

And here we have Grady making "Secret Cement". The boys worked on it for a while over the weekend, but then during the week, Grady had me come outside to see his secret formula. "First you add some dirt, then you add some water. Then you stir it all around and add more dirt. You also need to add some little rocks. You dump out the extra water and add more dirt if it needs some. When you dump it out, it sort of looks like poop but it's not really poop. It's Secret Cement." I refused to get my hands dirty making the Secret Cement, but he was very into it.