{"id":138,"date":"2006-03-01T12:59:14","date_gmt":"2006-03-01T12:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2006\/03\/01\/amen\/"},"modified":"2006-03-01T12:59:14","modified_gmt":"2006-03-01T12:59:14","slug":"amen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2006\/03\/01\/amen\/","title":{"rendered":"Amen"},"content":{"rendered":"

N is starting to try to assert his independence. In non-parent speak, this means he’s saying “no” to things for no apparent reason. Because I’ve already gone through this with C, I really want to nip it in the bud. He’s allowed to say “no” to inquiries (like “would you like ketchup with that?”), but not to commands.<\/p>\n

This is a lot harder than it sounds.<\/p>\n

The other night, for example, we were saying good night to the others and I told him (as I do every night) to “say goodnight to mama.” His response was “no.” I put him down and told him that until he said goodnight, he wasn’t getting carried anywhere. <\/p>\n

He thought about this one for a while and then said “night, night mama..”<\/p>\n

Last night, I found myself in another ridiculous battle. This time it was after our family bedtime prayer, and he was refusing to say “amen.” After trying everything I could think of, I said “say amen or go to timeout.”<\/p>\n

Yes, I am an idiot.<\/p>\n

He said “no” of course, so I took him to the time out spot and let him sit and think about it. He promptly began singing a little nonsense tune. He must have learned this trick from his brother<\/a>, and yes, it still drives me crazy.<\/p>\n

The proscribed time in time-out is one minute per year of age. So after about a minute, I went back, squatted down so I was on his level and asked him if he was ready to say “amen”.<\/p>\n

“Nope.”<\/p>\n

I gave him a stern “you’re not coming out of time out until you say amen” and left. After waiting another minute, I tried again. This time he said “yes”.<\/p>\n

“Great!” I said, “say amen”<\/p>\n

“Okay”<\/p>\n

“You can’t come out of time-out until you say amen. Will you say amen?”<\/p>\n

“Yes”<\/p>\n

“Say amen”<\/p>\n

“Okay.”<\/p>\n

“Say Amen!”<\/p>\n

“Yes!”<\/p>\n

Realizing that I had, in fact, been trapped in a Laurel and Hardy routine, I stopped the conversation and stood
up to walk away. “Okay. You stay there until you can say amen”<\/p>\n

“Amen.”<\/p>\n

“What did you say?”<\/p>\n

I looked over to see him grinning impishly as he said “What?”. <\/p>\n

I don’t use the word impishly lightly. The strict definition is, I believe, “like an imp”. An imp, of course, is a kind of demon. I’m not saying he was smiling demonically, of course. At least I don’t think I am. I loomed over him and said “Say amen.” <\/p>\n

He must have caught some ominous change in my tone. He smiled, held up his hands to be picked up and said “amen.” I took him to bed, relieved to be released from his time out.  <\/p>\n

In fact, I’m pretty sure that was the single most idiotic time out in history. I just hope I’ve learned my lesson.<\/p>\n

Can I get an amen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

N is starting to try to assert his independence. In non-parent speak, this means he’s saying “no” to things for no apparent reason. Because I’ve already gone through this with C, I really want to nip it in the bud. He’s allowed to say “no” to inquiries (like “would you like ketchup with that?”), but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[122,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-embarassing","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6DpYi-amen","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}