Whose child is the weird one?

[CousinQuandary]

I’m staying with DSis. Her DD(8) has the world’s biggest collection of Playmobil, beautifully laid out all round her room. She does play with it, but it’s always kept very neat.
My DD(5) has pulled the heads off the flowers. She also pulled the leaves off the trees and put them in the Playmobil swimming pool.
DSis thinks this is really strange behaviour - to dismantle things rather than playing with them in the way they were intended.
I think my DD is normal and it’s her DD’s obsessive tidiness that is abnormal. AIBU?

Is the 5 year old used to playing with older children. Dd spent hours playing with our neighbour at 5/6/7/8 (neighbour is 4 years older) the play was definitely of the tablau variety (huge amount of playmobile). I have known other DCs who are destructive with toys, I generally make them clear it up before the end of the playdate. But then I am not a terribly creative person

@Voomster953

Were you hoping we’d all join in to run your niece down, OP?

Not at all! We honestly both thought our child was the “normal” one. It’s not about which is right - just which is more common behaviour for a child.

Neither my DSis nor my niece have complained about my DD dismantling the trees and flowers, but my sister said she thought it was odd behaviour. Which I thought was odd!

My DSis used to use old birthday cards to play schools. She actually used to stand them all up on the floor and imagine they were the pupils. I used to take great delight in opening her bedroom door, wafting it enough to blow down all the cards.
We had Lego and used it in imaginative play, play Mobil wasn’t a thing back then.
DS learnt the rules of rugby playing with his dinosaurs.
We have all turned out fairly normal.
What isn’t normal is gluing Lego models so your child doesn’t take them apart after you have built them, yes I have a friend who did this.
Your DS may have repurposed the leaves and flowers through imaginative play. Maybe they double up as fish in his mind.

They are 5 & 8 just let them be themselves without being labelled as weird. They'll have enough of that as they go through secondary school. Their home is meant to be a safe space.

Sorry DD

Did you tell your Dd off op, for dismantling her cousins things?

@GreyhoundG1rl

Not really on to let your kid dismantle another kid's playmobil. I know it actually comes apart, but it's not really designed for constant rebuilding like Lego.

This. You shouldn’t have allowed your DD to do this, whether they come apart easily or not.

I think if an 8 year old has beautifully arranged toys (whether playmobil, dolls house, lego, whatever), I wouldn't risk a 5 year old near them, and would make sure there's something to play with that wouldn't cause upset. If we had a younger child coming round, I used to whip any completed lego models into a box and put them up high, leaving the rest of the bits to build with during the visit.

Well I would have been the one dismantling it all and I am a weirdo but I think everyone is in their own way. You have nothing to worry about though

I agree that no child should be dismantling another child's setup without permission. But it doesn't sound like that's the issue, rather the idea that dismantling Playmobil is inherently weird and destructive. Anyone saying that doesn't know anything about either Playmobil or how 5yo children play and learn.

Dismantling playmobil flowers is destruction, not playing.

Building stuff is playing, not tearing things apart and throwing them in the swimming pool.
DS had a friend like that who destroyed stuff- I dreaded him coming round.

They are explicitly designed to be dismantled. Do you think taking Lego bricks apart is destruction too?!!!

It was a play swimming pool not a real one. Sheesh!

@oakleaffy

Dismantling playmobil flowers is destruction, not playing.

Building stuff is playing, not tearing things apart and throwing them in the swimming pool.
DS had a friend like that who destroyed stuff- I dreaded him coming round.

She dismantled it to turn them into playmobile fish in the playmobile pool, how is that destruction?

I think I side with your sister's perspective more, my mine weren't at all rough and tumble kids. And if another kid messed with their Lego/Playmobil/BRIO/etc they would raise quite a stink. They loved what they built and were proud of it all.

But my neighbours' kids are like your daughter.

Both are within the range of normal but are very, very different types of people.

Kids are all different, neither are weird 😬

My mother's friend used to compare her whirlwind toddler daughter with sit-and-play-nicely me, trying to wind her up.

It didn't work.

I turned out the wilder one

Oh I love Playmobil!

Neither is weird. They just play differently.
DS asks for Lego sets, build them and keeps them built. He really struggles to use Lego any other way.
DD asks for Lego sets, builds them once then dismantles them and uses the pieces for very complicated constructions.
We have Playmobil coming out of our ears.
When the kids were smaller they would play massive games mixing lego, Playmobil and their wooden train tracks.
I thought it was fabulous. DH would sit and twitch because they were mixing the toys.
My BEST game with DD was when she had her Sylvanian treehouse and a mix of a few Sylvanian figues plus Jesse the Yodelling Cowgirl flying on a wooden sword hunting for a hat. DH was beside himself with anxiety.
As long as stuff gets put back the way it was then there's no harm.

I have a 5 year old and I think that I wouldn’t call that ‘dismantling’ I’d call it being destructive, and I would definitely apologise if my 5 year old behaved in that way!

@CousinQuandary

“ please celebrate who each of them are 🥰” This is so nice. Thank you.

I rad your updates OP - you and Dsis were just curious and not judgy about each other's child. Yes, absolutely normal to have a careful child that follows rules and an inventive child that creates own rules and looks chaotic, especially with age difference and also personality differences , even within same family !

It's so super OP that you haven't got caught up in how AIBU threads can go.

Glad you enjoy both DCs styles!

All children are weird.

Neither

@Dishwashersaurous

Er I’ve met lots of five year olds.

And I’ve built lots of playmobil.

You have to pull really hard to dismantle the flowers.

The op said that the scene was all set up and laid out. Dismantling parts of it, as opposed to moving people around etc, is breaking something.

Exactly what I was thinking.

Playing with the scenery and making stories normal.

Pulling the leaves and flower heads off - not so much! That not even imagination.

Imagination would be the little girl on the swing making friends with a dog and going on an adventure around play mobile land!