Wyatt and I have been having some problems. I have mentioned this before. About his refusal to listen. His sometimes dreadful sharing skills. His willingness to push my last button. His talking back. And of course his repeated use of that God Awful word: no. In response, I have added the time-out chair. Which worked for about 2 minutes. He simply doesn't care. It's not incentive enough for him to quit his bad behaviour. He will give himself time-outs when he is being extra crabby. On my next attempt, I decided to take away toys. I would give him 2 warnings and on the 3 he gets something taken away and put on the top of the fridge. He can get them back if he has an extra good day. I still do that sometimes but it is only really effective when I can take something away immediately. It doesn't work if we are out. By the time we make it home, he is usually better behaved and has forgotten all about the incident.
Then we hit an impasse. Drew, Wyatt and I were out to dinner. For whatever reason, Wyatt was not having it. He is always amazing so I guess he is allowed a bad day occasionally. He asked to go to the bathroom about 3 times simply because he was bored. Then he was running up and down the handicap ramp. He refused to listen when our food came out. Didn't eat one bite. I tried all my tricks. Nothing worked. Finally, I asked him to sit down or we were going to leave. He smirked at me and started walking backwards. I looked at Drew, told him I was sorry but I had to grab Wyatt and run. That Wyatt was testing me and I needed to act. Could he please grab the check and meet us in the car? As soon as I reached Wyatt he started screaming. He was upset, I was upset. As I was struggling to put him in his car seat and my face was inches from his, he reared back and slapped me. Right. Across. My. Face. I lost it. It was the last straw. Hitting is absolutely unacceptable. Where did he even learn something like that? I was screaming. Wyatt was hysterical. By the time Drew got into the car, no one was talking. I couldn't even breathe, I was so upset.
After calling Jen, Kari, and chatting with Mom, I came up with another plan. Obviously the time-out chair did not work, neither was taking away toys. What about trying something I haven't done? Why not reward positive behaviour instead of punishing bad? (Totally Jen's idea. Give credit where credit's due. She doesn't even have kids yet...brilliant) Of course, Wyatt will always respond better to the things he is doing right. So, I came up with this system. If he has a good day (see: sharing well, listening to his momma, cleaning up, etc) he gets a gold star for the day. When he reaches 10 gold stars he gets a gift or an adventure, pretty much whatever he chooses. Its his day. Gammy bought this school bus chart and I put it by his bed. Every night we go over why it was a gold star day or why it wasn't. If he starts acting up all I have to say is "I'm not sure its going to be a gold star day, or, that's not really gold star behavior." And he usually stops.
This has been for about 3 months now. I am not terribly consistant, which is a problem. There are nights when we get home late or he's really tired that we don't put stars on. But for the first month, it was religion. And his behaviour changed. He has been amazing. There was one day that he was really upset and he turned to me with hand raised ready to hit me. I grabed his wrist, got down on my knees, and said "Think about what you are doing right now. Are you sure you want to do that?" And he stopped. That was the last time he tried to hit me.
For his first 10 stars, he asked to go to Toys R Us. He tried riding every training wheeled bike in the store. I was convinced that he was going to ask for another bike. I said he had $50. He ended up picking out this tow truck for $20. That's what he wanted. His second 10 stars, we went to Chuck E Cheese. Mom told him that when he gets to 100 stars, we'll go to LegoLand. At the rate he is going we will be there by Christmas.
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