Monday, May 04, 2009

Tantrums-R-Us

The Monster has been melting down over very tiny things very often lately. Usually the punk does this just at the beginning of half-hour-long car rides in which Momma and Daddy don't have much in the way of recourse for his whines. We do our best with ignoring him and taking away privileges at our destination if possible, but it's really not as effective as taking him physically away from the situation to give him a time out. And it's harder on the parental sanity.

Other than the fact that the kid is 3 and ripe for this sort of behavior (and probably learning all sorts of similar tactics from his pals in daycare), I think Drew's reached an age where he's smart enough to know we can't be consistent 100% of the time, has probably caught us a time or two caving to his demands to get bad behavior to stop, and is now trying to figure out just how often he can make that payout. He's learning it's not often. We're on to the little bugger.

Still, it's been a rough couple of weeks as he tests us and we hold as firm a line as possible. Hopefully we're nearing the end of the worst phase of this childhood pleasure.

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