As a family, we enjoy taking walks in the evening. Sometimes these walks involve the kids riding in a wagon. Sometimes they involve bicycles and tricycles. Sometimes, these are relaxing and enjoyable. Other times it seems to take forever to travel just a few feet.<\/p>\n
A few months ago, we were having just such a walk. C was on a “stop” kick. He\u2019d take three or four steps and then hold out his hand and shout “stop!” We\u2019d coax, cajole, or bully him into walking – and he\u2019d take three more steps and shout “stop!”<\/p>\n
We considered the classic tactic of simply continuing to walk (forcing him to keep up with us), but the point of these walks is to relax and have a good time. We didn\u2019t want to turn them into a battle.<\/p>\n
So the pattern continued: step, step, \u201cSTOP!\u201d, step, step, step, \u201cSTOP!\u201d<\/p>\n
After a half hour or so, I was so desperate that when he said \u201cStop\u201d, I sang out\u00a0\u201din the name of love before you break my heart. Think it o-over. Stop! Stop! Think it o-over. Stop! Stop!\u201d<\/p>\n
I even did the hand motions.<\/p>\n
This stumped him. He looked at me uncertainly and then started walking again. When he said \u201cstop\u201d again, I did it again. This time he giggled. After only a couple more times, he gave up on actually stopping and started trying to learn the song while he walked with us. He and I developed something of a routine, where he would sing\/shout the \u201cstop\u201ds and I\u2019d sing the rest.<\/p>\n
Flash forward to last night. The kids were playing with the trains, and N was shouting \u201cstop!\u201d at C every time he picked up a train. C was really frustrated, but then he suddenly relaxed and started smiling. The next time N shouted stop, C looked at me and started singing \u201cin the name of dove, before you break me hearties. Think it o-over.\u201d\u00a0I\u00a0shouted out\u00a0the ending stops, of course.<\/p>\n
If any of The Supremes are reading this, please accept my heartfelt thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a family, we enjoy taking walks in the evening. Sometimes these walks involve the kids riding in a wagon. Sometimes they involve bicycles and tricycles. Sometimes, these are relaxing and enjoyable. Other times it seems to take forever to travel just a few feet. A few months ago, we were having just such a […]<\/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":[123,121,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-the-kids","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6DpYi-stop","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33116","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=33116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}