Grass Obsession

I let Ethan play in the back yard for a while before we went to church this weekend.  When I went to tell him it was time to go, he had two huge handfuls of grass.  Taking grass and shredding it to tiny pieces, then watching them flutter to the ground is perhaps his very favorite pass time.

When new people start working with Ethan the one thing I always warn them about is grass.  Do not try to take grass away from him.  That has prompted several of the very few aggressive behaviors in Ethan over the last 15 years.

Typically if he is out on the back yard playing with grass, I lead him toward the sliding glass door, and he will throw whatever grass he has over the fence into the neighbor's yard and then be ready to go.  We were running a little late so I decided to skip that part and we just went out the side gate.

That turned out to be a mistake.  Without lingering for a few minutes, Ethan wasn't ready to throw the grass over the fence.  He slowly shredded it as we walked.  When we got to church he still had a lot of   grass.  So we waited outside the church entrance and missed the first 5-8 minutes of Mass so he could finish shredding.

But I stuck to the rule and didn't try to take it from him.  He and I have got each other fairly well trained.  He mostly does what I tell him to do.  And I mostly don't tell him to do things he doesn't want to do.