October 6, 2006 - Friday
It happens a lot: the boys fool around in the bathroom at bedtime and get very silly and, dawdle getting their pajamas on and brushing their teeth. On the one hand it's all to be expect because they're little children who don't want to go to bed. On the other hand, it's very annoying and, at times, just plain disrespectful to their mother. We threaten them with the prospect of no stories, and sometimes that helps, but usually only a little and certainly not on a long term basis. Lately, their mother has tried to just leave them alone in the bathroom until they're ready to be responsible, thereby reducing the time they will have for stories, but I don't really think they appreciate the concept of temporal inflexibility to really get that.

Last night they were being particularly silly and both ended up without any stories. That's happened a few times before, but this time I had a long talk with both of them. Admittedly, because it was our 15th anniversary yesterday we got them started to bed a little early and even with all the fooling around it was still a little early. So I used the time to lay a bit of a guilt trip on them. Harry's heard it before, but I don't think I've talked to Jeremy about being respectful to his mother during one of the only times of the weekdays that she gets to see him. I gave the same thing to Harry, but this time I also appealed to his sense of strategy (that seemed to work so well with the after-school bus routine). I told Harry that I knew that Jeremy was the one who was causing most of the trouble in the bathroom (this is true) and that Harry was mostly going along with it, but that this was a time when Harry needed to be the leader. He was two years older (not an approach I've used very often and one I use guardedly here) and he should be able to be the one to decide what happens in the bathroom. He didn't have to let Jeremy decide. He should be the leader. I think that idea should register with Harry.

Tonight he was perfect in the bathroom.


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