It Worked!

So as I mentioned in my previous post I'm reading "Mission to Motherhood" and one of the author's suggestions is to be more available to play with our kids.

Today as we walked home from our friend's house Rhett started whining as soon as he caught sight of our house. "I don't want to go home!" He cried this chant for the rest of the walk. I went inside and left him outside screaming. He eventually came inside to continue his lamenting indoors (fortunate for our neighbors.) As I sat on the computer (imagine that) I half tuned him out waiting for him to get over his blues of being at his drab home instead of his friends more exciting house.

I decided to put into practice what I had been reading about. "Rhett, our home is fun too. We have ice cream." Ususally I would not allow ice cream in the middle of the afternoon but I was desperate and I know what a sucker my son is for anything sweet. "I don't want ice cream," he replied. Great, since when does that not work. "Rhett, our home has zoo animals and we could pretend to be some." All of a sudden silence for the first time in 15 mins. You could see the light bulb go off in his head. "I like playing zoo animals," he said with a smile creeping on his face. IT WORKED. "Which animal would you like to be?" I asked him. "A tiger, roooaaaaarrrr" he replied.

We spent the next 15 mins. crawling all over the house as tiger's, lion's, bear's, giraffe's (we had to stand up for these,) rabbits, armadillo's and snakes. Emersen stayed a snake the entire time since she could not quite get her tummy off the floor or make any loud animal sounds. Funny thing I actually enjoyed myself. Amazing what a little play can do for a child.