October 20, 2002 - Sunday
I think we started to overdo it letting Harry watch Bob the Builder last week. Maybe it was just a two-year-old flexing his will, but each time we turned off the Bob the Builder tape, regardless of pre-warning, Harry would turn into a rather nasty child. In the mornings when I had been letting him watch a little, and when I'm still tired, I have less tolerance for this sort of irrational behavior and don't offer Harry much in the way of patience and that makes bushing teeth and other morning necessities awkward.But, it happened in the evenings, too, so after a very bad episode Friday night during his bath with mommy and at bedtime with me, we decided over the weekend that there would be no Bob the Builder for Saturday and perhaps the whole weekend. We held to that yesterday, but not today.

The thing was that when Harry woke up from his nap I was watching the MLS final, along with channel surfing to Sunday afternoon football, and he immediately demanded Bob the Builder.
"I want Bob the Builder," he repeated over and over.
"I'm watching soccer right now Harry."
"You'll have to wait for daddy to finish watching his soccer," added his mother, "we all have to share the TV."
I stopped most of the channel surfing, just avoid further opportunity for confusion. And, after an initial few minutes of protest, Harry patiently waited for what turned out to be a long time through almost two full overtime periods. He waited on the sofa for a while, went and did other things for a while, but when the soccer was over he again asked, nicely this time, to watch Bob the Builder. Patience is a hard lesson for a child (or an adult for that matter) and Harry seemed to have learned it on this occasion. I reminded him that there could be no whining when it was time to turn off the TV for dinner and he agreed. So, we turned on Bob the Builder again. When it was over, he complained, but quite sparingly and then quickly came to the table for dinner.


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