He’s a funny one. When we’ve disciplined him recently he’s started attempting to retort; if you punish me, I’ll punish you, he seems to think. His zingers have included:
“If you send me to my room . . . I’m, I’m not going to play with you.”
“If you don’t behave I’m not going to share my toys with you.”
Today he came to the kitchen to announce to me: “I’m not going to let you do any more dishes . . . and I’m going to put you on a high, high shelf.” I think he confused me with his own toys, which get put up when he is too rough with them.
We’ve also had trouble keeping him in bed at night. Every now and then he wants to visit us, whether shortly after we put him to bed or at 5 in the morning. This evening he came down shortly after bedtime, and I heard, “Mom, can I come down?” When I said no, he promptly trotted upstairs, closed the door to his room, and went to bed.
Sydney explained to me recently that, whether we’re disciplining, playing, or ignoring Nathaniel, our little guy’s always looking for a chance to strike up a chat or to negotiate–anything to catch you up in a conversation with him. Nathaniel likes being able to interact and bargain and flirt and anything else he can get away with. When he tries this with strangers he gets some interesting results. Sometimes he simply announces a random fact about the surroundings: “There are balls over there to play with!” and other times he confesses that Katherine did something wrong and got in trouble for it. We never really know what he’s going to decide is good conversation material on any given day.
Erin
Alan Schmierer