October 14, 2001 - Sunday
This evening before Harry went up to his bath, his mother suggested he help pick up the megablocks that he had recently dumped from their regular storage bin onto the floor. Harry's often quite good about taking such suggestions and has just been through something of an organizational, "put away" phase. Unfortunately, he seems to be moving out of that phase and tonight did not respond to his mother. I was sitting there as she started the admittedly easy task of putting the blocks back in the bin and thought that it would be good for Harry to be part of the clean-up process. So, on the chance that he didn't hear his mother I brought him over to the megablocks to help. Harry said "don't like it."

On another day I may well have let this go, or perhaps shown some level of disappointment verbally, but today I made the snap decision to see it through. Maybe it was the right thing, or maybe I'd just had a frustrating day, but in that moment I reasoned that Harry should not just walk away from his mother and his mess. I brought him back to the pile of blocks and started to put some away myself, thinking that maybe his mother and my example would be enough to encourage Harry to join in and do his part. It was not. Instead, Harry slumped to the floor in typical toddler limp-body mode, again professing his desire to avoid something he didn't like. That only established another principle and I made another decision in the moment that just doing things he "liked" was not the lesson for this day. Picking up his messes was something to do whether or not he was going through a particular "put away" phase.

Harry played his whining card, but I responded with less patience that usual. I almost immediately moved him to the sofa to sit in time-out mode until his mother and I finished the pick up. Harry, however, did not dally on the sofa and tried to make a break of sorts. His radius around me wasn't quite big enough and I pulled him toward the blocks again, this time placing a megablock in his hand and encouraging his hand toward the bin. When he dropped the block inside, his mother and I both commended him on his effort with relieved praise. We finished picking up quickly and I honestly don't remember whether Harry helped any more than that or not. I like to think he picked up another one or two megablocks, but in hindsight it's not clear. I like to think he learned a lesson, but that's not particularly clear either. I like to think I did the right thing by sticking to it and getting him to appreciate the difference between don't like and responsibility, but I'm pretty sure parenting isn't that straightforward. All I can really hope is that he did more learning than scarring from my agressive reaction. I think he probably did, at least.


Comments, opinions?