As it is, you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse. --E. A. Poe
Our dear sweet boy Eric has been seized lately by the spirit of the Imp of the Perverse, that force which drives us to "perpetrate [acts we know we should not] merely because we feel that we should not," as the writer says.
As proof, I offer you the worst public half-hour of Eric's life, in the waiting room at the laboratory as we waited for the phlebotomist to call my name. Repeatedly, and with escalation, Eric chose to do precisely the one thing I told him he could not do. A typical example:
Eric has pulled one of the kid-sized chairs into the center of the aisle that nearly every person called needs to walk through, and is sitting contentedly in it. Mama says: "Eric, you may not block the aisle. You may bring the chair over here by me, or put it at the end of that aisle there."
Eric does not move. "I am going to sit here," he says.
"That's not an acceptable choice," Mama says. "You may sit here by me, or at the end of the aisle. Which do you choose?"
Eric: "I'm not gonna choose."
Mama: "If you don't choose, I'm going to put that chair away and you will have to sit in my lap."
Obstinate silence.
Mama: "Since you can't choose, I'm going to put the chair away."
Mama makes to move the chair. Eric howls, "No, no, no, I choose the end of the aisle! I choose the end of the aisle!"
Too late, dear boy.
Remember eight paragraphs up where I said he was sitting contentedly? That was the last moment of contentment until we left the lab.
We played repeated iterations of this game, under the glares (and occasional smiles) of the packed waiting room, for a good half-hour. Here's the formula, into which you may insert any details you like:
Eric does something he shouldn't.
Mama points out some better choices, and makes a threat points out a consequence.
Eric refuses to choose.
Mama chooses for him/follows through on threat.
There is shrieking.
Alternately:
Eric asks for a concession: "Can I get off your lap if I sit in the big chair right next to you?"
Mama grants the concession: "Yes, you may, as long as you stay in the chair. If you get out of the chair, you'll have to come back into my lap. Do you understand?"
Eric understands. Therefore it must be the Imp of the Perverse that leads him to either push for additional concessions ("I'll just stand next to the chair.") or immediately break ranks and run amok.
The child is retrieved and re-lapped.
There is shrieking.
As we came back into the waiting room after my blood draw, Eric following along behind me whimpering abjectly, the one nice woman who had smiled instead of glared during the half-hour Discipline Derby touched my arm and said, "I promise, it gets easier."
I said, "He's almost three, and this is literally the first time anything like this has happened. I have no complaints."
It's not just the Imp of the Perverse, of course. We're being tested. Every time Eric does the thing he has been told not to do and risks the consequence, he is collecting a data point. His research hypothesis: "They will not follow through." It is our job to falsify his hypothesis. We are shooting for 100% follow-through in this troubled time because we want him to conclude that we mean what we say.
This means consequences have to be chosen carefully. We have to be able, as well as willing, to follow through, and it's better to let something go altogether than to say, "If you do X, Y will happen," and let X happen without Y. An important question I ask myself daily: "Am I really willing to get off the couch to take that away from him?" Sometimes the answer is No.
Because of his behavior this morning, and because it has continued, in a quieter way, now that we're at home, I have taken the unprecedented-in-his-lifetime step of canceling a nearly-essential trip to the grocery store, scheduled for the immediate post-lunch time slot. This is data manipulation; Eric has never given me any trouble in the grocery store, and I don't want him to ruin a perfect record today.
Posted by Su Penn at March 11, 2004 12:18 PM | TrackBack