The naughty crayon

It's always interesting as a parent to watch Travis and, through his words/play/pretending, etc., to see how he interprets my actions and words toward him. Today, I set up his Little Tikes slide in the living room. Jayna was sitting playing with some toys, I was picking stuff up, and Travis had five big crayons that he was first setting on top of the slide, then once they were all laying side by side, he would push them down the slide all together. Occasionally, however, one crayon would slide down by itself, before Travis was ready. And then, watch out! Travis would look sternly at the crayon and say "No, no! Don't do dat, otay?!" (Long and drawn out on the "otay"). Then he would proceed to take the crayon over to the stair (this is where he has his time-outs), and say "time-out". He'd give the crayon a few minutes, then go over, sit down next to it, and in a much sweeter voice say something like, "Be nice" or, "do dat again?" (while shaking his head). And then he would go along his merry way.

As you can imagine, I was cracking up. He was just so serious through it all. What was most interesting was seeing MY facial expressions on HIS face, and him using my tone of voice. Very funny.

I must say, it does feel like we're turning a corner with Travis. It seems like for a REALLY long time (as in many months), getting Travis to obey has taken a ton of patience, energy, distraction, and even some manipulation. But we're just noticing that he finally seems to be understanding that if he doesn't obey, there are consequences. Obviously, there will always be a need for discipline, and there will be many struggles to come, and we will never have a perfect or even near-perfect child, because we are all sinners. But what I'm saying is that I think he is finally realizing that he is not the one in charge. Teaching that lesson to your child has got to be one of the biggest (and first) parenting hurdles for all of us to jump.

So what to make of "The Naughty Crayon" episode? Well, I'm not really one to read into things too deeply. If anything, it did confirm my observation that Travis responds positively to time-outs. He responds well to spankings, too, but we try to really save those, especially since time-outs work for him. Anyway, Travis was still playing his little game when Steve got home, so Steve got his laugh for the day, as well.