Battle of wills

This evening, I won a battle of wills against ZY. It took a gruesome 30 mins of crying on his part and endurance on mine, but the parent won.

After ZY had his fruits, he was holding ZK's Bumblebee when ZK came over to claim his toy. Faced with the approach, ZY threw the toy away towards the dishes. I told him that he should not have thrown the toy and to say sorry. He refused and wanted me to carry him out of the baby chair. I refused. And the battle started.

For the first half of the battle, he was alternating between asking me to carry and asking Mum to carry. He was just rubbing his eyes and face when facing me, but when he turned to Mum, he was also stealing glances at her through sobs!! Mum tried to demonstrate to him how to say sorry, e.g. sayang Bumblebee which suffered the throw. He refused. I compromised a little - instead of saying sorry, just admit that he threw the toy. He refused.

When Mum left, he turned to alternating between me and N. I told N to just focus on cleaning up and retreat to her room. That left ZY with only me. He started complaining about his eyes, his nose. I cleaned him up but refused to budge otherwise. At one point, I decided to give him (and me!) another way out and asked him, who did it - ZK or ZY. He said ZK *.*

Now that reminded me of the battle of wills against ZK when he was just over two as well - that was when we just returned from Malacca and were heading out again for dinner. ZK hit Dad and refused to say sorry. He even said it was Dad's fault. I was occupied with baby ZY so Sito took on that battle. He won after some crying, but it was distinctly a swifter victory - way under 30 min.

Who is the naughtier boy??

ZY can be so stubborn! He was such a poor thing, crying so much and starting to cough. But I could not back off. From our experience with ZK, we - so glad that Sito and I are aligned on this - know that ZY can understand this already.

The turning point came when I asked him whether he wanted to be carried for perhaps the 10th time. Yes he did. So I asked him to say "Yangyang did it". And he said it!

So finally, I could carry my baby. I also demonstrated to him what he did earlier and mimicked him throwing the toy towards the dishes. He took the toy and made a throwing motion though he did not throw; he just said, "Not like this; no throwing toys!" This is his style - whenever I tell him to do something correctly, he would demonstrate what not to do (motion only) and what to do (actual action).

This wasn't the first such battle but it was the first serious one. Think there's more work to be done for this little one....