We Are Home To Mr.NO & Mr. IT’s MINE!

Red and I have always tried to use positive words rather than negative words when communicating things to MLM. Kids are like sponges and like mirrors…they’ll absorb everything and reflect them back on you…add boomerang to that list since they keep coming back no matter where you throw them. You *don’t* throw your kids? Pity….try it sometime…it’s cathartic!

Anyhoo…moving on from my not very maternal fantasies…we’ve been wondering how to get MLM out of his habit of saying NO to every damn thing that we ask him to do or not to do AND also his habit of justifying his actions by proclaiming- IT’s MINE!! Am tacking on only 2 exclamations…he adds a gazillion after his screeches.

The thing is…no matter how hard you try, it’s inevitable that the child hears NO from you on a fairly regular basis. If not NO then its loyal family of NOT, DON’T, STOP all hover inside our mouths just waiting to jump out and assault the child bent on doing things his own way.

Take today’s instance for example: MLM somehow got his hands on an extension cord that was happily wound up and kept out of reach- or so we thought. He unraveled the entire bit and dumped the rest onto his cycle carrier and was zooming around the house. I saw and asked him to stop knowing that the tangled cables would either mess up the bike or would cause a fall and a resulting ouchie; post which I’d have to kiss the aforementioned ouchie and tell the bike it had been very naughty for hurting MLM. Yup…my days are filled with fun things to do.

So the little man immediately acts like I’m the Gestapo and starts yelling IT’s MINE!! and NO! NO! NO! GIFF IT BACK!!! Seeing that the belligerence in my eyes hadn’t dimmed a bit he starts off on his impressions of a banshee (not a pretty sound especially on a day when I’ve been diagnosed with AOM) and just carries on till I box his ears and threaten to give the cycle away to the trash collector tomorrow morning.  Yes…we’re the threatening parents…rather I am…Red still tries to strike a balance…when that fails he calls me and I promptly come in and threaten.

The point is it shouldn’t be this hard…you shouldn’t have to be a bad cop for your kid to understand that you want them to be safe. But given that children much older than my boy have deliberately done dumber things, with more serious implications just goes to show you that kids really don’t listen. It’s not done with malice either. They just don’t know any better. And since you know better and try to stop them and end up cementing their intentions even more. But the alternative isn’t a pretty one at all…isn’t the most important part of being a parent is to keep your child safe? Not every experience is worth having when seen from a parent’ s viewpoint and in reality.

But till that glorious day comes when my child actually exhibits that he has brains and can use them appropriately, I guess we’ll be keeping company with the evil twins- Mr.NO & Mr. IT’s MINE.

I just hope their family doesn’t grow any more…I have very few weapons left in my arsenal 😦 The most effective of which continue to be Mr.Bedtime (for the child) and Mrs. Glass-0f-Wine ( for moi).

Toodles!