The Motivation Inclination

My son and I had a battle of wills today.  It started when he got a hold of a grown-up game with lots of cards.   You know the type, like Trivial Pursuits with a full box of cards that are organized in the same direction and orientation.  When I came up to the room, he had dumped them on the floor.

"This is okay", I thought; "he will just have to put them back."  So I told him about his future task and that strewing them around the floor (which he was enjoying doing) would only make his clean up work longer.  He is two-and-a-half, he didn't care.

Soon, he wanted to do other things and I prevented him from all of them.  He was informed he would not be able to do anything else until the cards were picked up.  He tried tactic after tactic on me such as, "I want to take a nap," sneaking off, trying to engage his sister or me, pretending to need to go to the potty, flinging himself down on the floor and generally not doing anything at all to put a single card away.

I told him I was willing to help, but that I couldn't put up cards unless he did.  The battle became protracted as he refused to do anything, stating again and again that he couldn't do it and it was too hard.

I tried many forms of motivation, including incentive: "you can have a nap when you've put the cards up."  Fear: "your father is going to be very upset when he comes home and sees this isn't cleaned up."  (And on the fear note, he probably was afraid of me because I lost my temper at him more than once.)  I also used achievement:  "you will have done such a good job, won't daddy be proud when he sees what you did cleaning all these cards up."  And even social motivation:  "your sister has cleaned up her work, it's time for you to clean up yours."

But nothing worked.  The battle was getting ugly.  I wasn't going anywhere.  Right before daddy got home I was working on something in the closet and he saw a game he'd never seen before.  He tried to get at it and play with it.  I reminded him again that he wouldn't be able to do anything else until the cards were cleaned up.  This time, with the motivation of something else he wanted to play with badly enough, he ran over and started putting the cards into the box.

That game won't be there next time to entice him.  It was such a quick thing to put up the cards, but the battle to win and have your way sometimes makes things ever so much more complicated.

The Big Boy Update:  "I can't reach it.  You're taller."  There was a truck on the counter he wanted (that I had intentionally put up high where he couldn't reach it).  After trying to grab it with no success, he turned to me and said, "I can't reach it.  You're taller."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Sign writer.  Her friends next door are at camp.  They're older friends at eleven and thirteen, but she loves playing with them.  Today we wrote two signs, "Hi Shane!" and "Hi Blake!" and had her hold them while we took pictures of her.  Then we got a picture of her waving and printed them on a piece of paper.  Then...she drew all over it.  Tomorrow her pictures are going to camp via the postal service as Blake and Shane will be gone a whole month.

Fitness Update:  Gym.  Tired.  I'm not sure why.  Don didn't seem to care that I was tired.  He told me he "trains" and that we just, "work out."

Someone Once Said: You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.