Big Brother comes to the rescue of his sister.

Over the past few months, I've deliberately been telling Brayton that he needs to be a good big brother and help his sister whenever she needs help. I really didn't think these frank conversations had any effect on him, but once again I've been proven wrong. He takes everything in that I say to him. That became evident today.

Today I took the kids to the mall to play at the park there. Colette was trying to make some carmel corn and it's pretty hard to work in the kitchen with two children at your feet all the time. So I packed up the kids and we went to the mall. Of course, since it's two days until Christmas the mall was packed.

There were kids and parents everywhere. Many of the kids however are completely unsupervised, this is a problem that drives me nuts. Parents just drop their kids off at the park and then go off shopping or whatever, it's like a mall babysitting service. It's really shocking.

Well, B and Lauren were playing on the train in the park. Lauren was sitting by the slide and some little boy, about B's size and age started pushing Lauren. Presumably because he thought she was in his way, if he was wanting to go down the slide, she wasn't in his way. So, really there was no reason for this boy to be pushing on Lauren.

Brayton, seeing this happen rushed over to his sisters rescue. I was about to jump in but when I saw B taking charge, I kind of stood back to see what would happen.

Brayton said two times to the little boy, "Stop pushing my sister." This didn't deter the little pusher. When he pushed Lauren a third time, Brayton pushed his arm through placing his palm against the wall of the train and separating the little boy from Lauren. Then the little pusher proceeded to try to push Brayton. Brayton turned his body so his back was facing the little pusher and Brayton stuck his butt out and with a big hip thrust effectively shoved the little boy off the back of the train. He fell about a foot and was not harmed at all. He proceeded to stand up and ran off.

At that point, I went to Brayton and asked him if he was allright. He proceeded to tell me "That boy was pushing Lauren!!" I told him I saw it all and that I was proud of him for sticking up for his sister.

When we got home to eat lunch, Colette asked B if he had fun at the mall. He said "yes". Then Colette asked him what had happened (I had not told Colette the entire story at this point) and Brayton proceeded to tell Colette the whole thing. "There was a boy who was pushing Lauren."

I was very happy to see big brother stick up for his sister, and happy to know our conversations do get absorbed into his little head.