Sam, running into Ben's room...
"Mom, I peed on my train table!"
...silence...
"Uh...you did what?" (I wish I had a picture of my face...I'm sure it was good.) "Are you serious...are you teasing me?"
**grinning** "I peed on my train table...am I silly?"
"Sam, go sit in your room until I finish and can see what you did."
And yes, he peed on his train table. Wet pants and underwear and a puddle of pee were waiting for me on the train table. What I can't figure out is if he stood up there and peed in his pants or if he pulled down his pants and peed on top on them. Oh, if walls could talk.
I figure all this was likely for attention. I had a busy morning making phone calls, working on the budget, and doing general housekeeping stuff. Sam kept wanting me to come do a puzzle with him, see his puzzle, see his car, pick out a car, etc...something, all. morning. long. And while I took a second to look at each thing he asked me to, I apparently didn't give him as much time as he needed from me this morning. And so, he took it up a level to get my attention.
After feeding Ben I made Sam clean up his mess. Made him take the train table top out to the gate to go out to the trash...it was raining and a little chilly and he did not like it. And then I told him he couldn't play in his playroom the rest of the morning (for the next 30 minutes or so before lunch) and he instead needed to clean up and put all his toys away. I quickly realized this was going to take a while in between the fits, crying, whining, rolling on the floor, and continued attempts to play while he was cleaning which resulted in a couple of trips to sit in his room. (This is actually a recurring battle lately and it can take him 30-45 minutes to clean up his playroom these days...something that should take 10 minutes.) Having been to a Love and Logic seminar just 9 days prior, I decided to use some of those techniques. I got his clock from his room and told him lunch time was "until the big hand gets to the 10" and then it would be time to get ready for nap. I made his lunch and put it on the table for him and watched him waste his lunch time away while I ate mine. The poor kid never finished cleaning up before nap time (spent almost an hour working on it) so he got those toys taken away, and then he had to go take his nap without having eaten lunch...I saved his lunch and he got it when he woke up.
The best part of the experience was that later that evening when I told him it was getting close to dinner time and to start cleaning up, he got a little frantic and wanted to make sure it wasn't time right then. He quickly put things away and had a brilliant thought, "Mom, I'm just going to play with one thing." Point made, lesson learned!
And the funniest part...
During the painful process of being upset and hungry while trying to clean up before nap time, he told me, "Mom, we don't want you any more...I want my daddy!"
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