You want to know an empty feeling? Come home from work and have your 3-year-old kids ignore you because they're busy drawing. I fully expect my boys to ignore me when they're 14, but when they're 3? Here's how I fixed the problem. Whenever I come home, I bring them either a treat or a prize. The treats are something like a piece of Jolly Rancher candy that I grab from the candy jars at work. The prizes are crappy things that can be found lying around at companies, like Ion+ decals or anti-stress balls. Now when I come home, I hear shouts and demands. My children love me, they really, really love me. They chase me around the house, pry the treat/prize out of my hands, and then make me tell them the story of how I got it. The stories usually involve tricking the troll that lives under the bridge or defeating the pirates that menace Lake Union.So yesterday, I forgot to grab something from the candy jar and went home without a treat. When the boys asked me if I had a treat, I told them what I usually tell them: No. Unfortunately, I always say no to tease them. So they started to chase me, and I told them that no, really, I don't have a treat, and no means no. They're smart kids, so they know that despite what feminists claim, no doesn't really mean no during negotiations. Thinking quickly, I saw two Lego catalogs sitting in the junk mail pile, so I grabbed them and started running around the house. It worked! They chased me down, grabbed the catalogs, and stared at them for the rest of the evening.
Luke enjoyed the catalog a little too much. He read the catalog for an hour before dinner. He read the catalog all through dinner. He read the catalog while standing in the bathtub. When I took the catalog away from him so that I could clean him, he cried for the next 15 minutes while I watched the baseball game and kept shouting, "No, you can't have the Lego catalog! You're wet!" He slept with the catalog under his bed. This morning, he insisted that his mother repair the catalog with tape and staples. Luke is addicted to Lego porn.
you need to do a better job of disciplining your children. Instead of just telling them "No," you should have told them "No" and then told them that because they are so selfish, they would never get anything else ever again.
ReplyDeleteAnd then you should have started drinking. Heavily.
Lego has a magazine that comes out every month. To curve the Lego addiction.
ReplyDelete