Beating the Clock
It's about time she figured out how this world works.
For some children, they respond to discipline like maybe a “thinking corner” or whatever the correct parenting term these days is for go to your room. Others might be all about praise and positive reinforcement. Not here.
Ours? It’s all about the clock.
She’s always been that way. If you ask her to do something whether it’s get dressed for school or for the last time: get off the tablet!. Unless you add a time to it you get ignored or stalled or outright no.
Add a timer? You’re golden.
This morning I wanted her to go get dressed. She was farting around and not doing what she was asked to do, but then I offered to time her with my stopwatch app.
She got dressed in 1 minute and 18 seconds.
That’s actually pretty impressive. I’m still looking for socks the first minute so the fact that she could run upstairs, find some clothes she wanted to wear, put them on and then run downstairs for the reveal in less time than it takes to reheat my coffee is pretty impressive.
The clock does not to be a stopwatch either, although currently that’s what’s popular. Take the tablet for example. If I just ask her to get off the tablet and go touch grass or something she will tell me no. If I warn her, and set a timer and the timer goes off then she co-operates just fine and listens to the ghost in the machine.
I just wish this did not take me six years to figure it out because she’s old enough now that she’s figured out her dad’s tricks so I won’t be able to use this for much longer.
And, as I keep telling her: if you’re well behaved, good things happen because as promised: the 36 little hoppy toys arrived today that I wrote about Monday:
We do not need 36 little plastic toys. We do not need more than the one the dog ate to be honest, but here we are with 36 of the things:
It took me about 20 minutes to convince her and there was more than a bit of bargaining involved but I finally convinced her to put 20 of them in a little baggie so she can give them out to each of her friends.
She actually added one more to give away because you can’t forget the teacher. She’s part of the class too! So make that 21 little toys that are leaving the house.
I guess you could call this a record breaking kind of day: We beat a record for both getting dressed and having the most little plastic toys in the neighborhood.
I’m such a proud parent tonight. I’m also happier we’re down to 16 of these things. When you factor in the loss/shrink stats and the dog factor we’ll be back down to having just a few of these toys in the house in no time.