Forest the Negotiator
Last week I took the boys up to DFW to see my family for Thanksgiving. I noticed over this trip that Forest has begun trying to negotiate for the things he wants. There were two really good examples of this during the trip:
First, ever since the Childrens’ Retreat out at Earthsprings Forest has been obsessed with M&Ms. Dawn had made some trail-mix snacks for all the children to take on nature walks and they had M&Ms in them. Now, Forest will just randomly ask me for “Ms?” with a sly grin on his face… He did this a number of times during our trip and I had to tell him “No, I don’t have any Ms!” He would then try and negotiate with me and hold up one finger and say “Ms?” When I said no he’d hold up four fingers and say “Ms?” I think once he understands quantity he’ll be a much more adept negotiator, but what he really needs to understand is when there really are no Ms to negotiate for in the first place. (:
Also, while packing up a box of toys to take with us I told the boys to put toys they wanted to take into the box. Both boys started putting things in and then one of them ponited at the ball-pit I’ve made for them out of a portable crib and said “balls?” I told them that we couldn’t take all of them (there are 300) but that they could take one of each color. The boys climbed into the ball pit and started handing me balls. I put one of each color into the box and handed them back the ones that we already had in the box saying “No, we already have that color!” Once all of the colors were in the box, Forest looks at me for a few seconds (I could almost see the gears cranking), and then picks up two green balls and looks at me and says “Green?”
Really… now how can I say no to that? (:
Eight or nine green balls in the box later he decided to try and sneak some other colors in but I wasn’t having it…
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