When Stellan does something he shouldn't, I ask him to stop or to switch behaviors. If he repeats Bad Thing A, I then mention to him what the consequence for another repeat offense will be. It only took a few tries for this to degrade to this:
Me: Stellan, please stop Bad Thing A or Consequence B will occur.
Stellan: If you invoke Consequence B, I will retaliate by resorting to Bad Thing C.
Me: If you resort to Bad Thing C, you will then earn yourself Consequence D.
Stellan: If I am subject to Consequence D, you will suffer the wrath of Bad Thing E.
And so it goes. I've found various strategies to stop this cycle, because I really don't like encouraging his creative little mind to think of of the meanest naughtiest things he could possibly do to upset me. But sometimes he does come up with some funny stuff. Like this one from earlier this week:
Me: Stellan, you can either leave the store with me right now, or I will pick you back up next week when Rachelle and I come back. [Not serious about this threat, but close enough be being serious that it comes off sounding pretty truthful.]
Stellan: But if you leave me here, I'll have to take someone's car. And we live really far away from here, so it will take a long time to get home. And I'll get sleepy while I'm driving the other car and I'll fall asleep and crash it. And then I'll get hurt.
Good thing he decided to leave with me!
4 comments:
Oh dear. You've made my day. Very funny stuff!
It's hard to stay mad when they're so darn clever.
And that A,B,C,D bit? Seriously brilliant!
Such a smarty pants! And a smart aleck. :) So funny!
A logical parent, a logical child.
My kids are much less logical and their responses are usually more like pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease. I prefer the creative logical retort that Stellan offers.
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