The Showdown

So Mattie and I had our first real showdown. A full out, winner take all, battle of the wills. Here is how it went down:

The contender

The objective

The Stakes: Ultimate power!!

Max and Mattie had been having their afternoon snack as usual. Today is was fruit snacks. Mattie has My Little Pony and Max has Spiderman (they both refuse to eat the others). So we started cleaning up and I asked Mattie to take her wrapper to the trash. She said no. Just flat out, no. Ok, well, that's not going to work. I asked her several more times, just to make sure she understood, then warned her about time out. She still said no.

So she went to time out for 2 minutes. After two minutes, I asked her again to pick up the wrapper and throw it away. She kind of whimpered and said no again. So we went to time out again. We did this cycle a few more times. Max offered to pick up the wrapper, I said no. After about the 6th time out (no kidding), he offered to help me clean up the living room, I said ok and he jumped up, but when I said all but the wrapper, he sat back down.

So Mattie and I went round and round. It is a good thing her time outs are only 2 minutes, or this could have taken all evening. But, she eventually saw that what I was asking was reasonable, and she agreed that I had the authority over her, and that she needed to do her part to help keep our house clean, and she picked it up and put it in the trash can. Score one: mom.