My son Julian turns two next month. He has very strong opinions already and does not like being told what to do (he gets this from his Dad). As you might imagine, this makes for some interesting battles about bath time, nap time, bedtime, etc. You see, the trick is that he has to think he came up with the idea to go to bed himself, not that he’s being told to go to bed. Yes, hard.
One trick I’ve learned is that I give him a very long sentence (i.e. a longer email) such as “Hey Julian, we can shoot the basketballs into the hoop for one more minute, but then we need to go upstairs and have a bath, ok?” He rarely ever replies to this long statement.
But, what I’ve found interesting is that I reply to my previous statement with a shorter one (i.e. a shorter email), “Julian, one more minute.” Then, what happens is amazing. He replies to me with:
“One more minute shooting the basketballs, then I have a bath Daddy.”