My sweet sweet boy Sam has started acting not-so-sweet. Particularly when it involves my asking him to do something other than the one thing he wants to do. I can relate to that, but the attitude (often with a tantrum thrown in) is not helping. If we stick to a pretty steady routine (piano right after school, etc), he does better, but you never can tell.
This year, as a 1st grader, Sam has the ability to purchase "Extras" from the cafeteria. Extras, as far as I can tell, are the junk that the school feels bad for including in lunch and therefore asks you to be the heavy and decide whether or not your kid can buy them. We chose "purchase with cash from home", so that he wouldn't live on cheetos all year. I've been using the Extras as incentive, and this week I decided that I'd wait until he had a good day practicing piano to give him the money for an Extra at lunch.
Yesterday he almost did it. He went right downstairs and started practicing. Yea! I walked down to put something away and he starts bawling. I'm thinking, "What happened???!!!" I asked what was wrong and he was crying because his "favorite show" (not) came on TV at that time and he would never be able to watch again. Good grief. So I told him about my plan for the Extra money if he could practice peacefully. Bad choice, then he was crying about that too and how EVERYONE at school got extras ALL THE TIME except him.
Oh my. I'd also been planning to let him ask a friend to spend the night, but since he spent the 30 minutes I was home before a meeting crying and carrying on, I figured it wasn't a great time to reward him with that either.
See, I WANT to be the nice mommy and give him fun treats. Instead, I have to be a stick-to-my-guns mommy and withhold the goodies until he behaves better. Frankly, that sucks.
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