“Mummy, Are You Well Behaved?”

Our family is big on “positive reinforcement”. That is, we work hard at rewarding good behaviour either with praise, or an occasional treat or surprise outing, or extra one-on-one, quality time with mummy and/ or daddy. Of course we punish or reprimand when the situation warrants it, but as the books say, “Instead of always catching them being bad, try to catch them being ‘good’ and reinforce that.”

Anyway, to be honest, when Abang is well behaved he says and does the cutest things. For example, today he sat nicely in his highchair feeding himself some pasta for lunch followed by biscuits. (By the way, this is already cause for celebration since getting him to eat is such an issue.) He’s struggling somewhat, trying to use the fork to push pasta on to the spoon and in the process getting a lot of sauce on his tray table. So I asked him, “Abang, do you need help with your pasta?” And he replied, “No, I need help getting the tissue.”

Ah, I wish I had my camera on video mode to record that! I handed him the box of tissue paper and he proceeded to wipe the whole tray table until there’s hardly any trace of spillage.

Later, we went out to a mall to pick up my watch that had been repaired. It took longer than I expected because the back cover was loose and had to be tightened, then the shopkeeper was explaining to me what they had done to the watch, blah blah blah … Abang was starting to get a bit fidgety so I whipped out his little writing book and colour pencils and asked if he would like to do some writing. The Gods of Good Behaviour must have been smiling down on us because he then sat there quietly doing some writing and colouring!

He wanted to play at Toys R Us, I said “Sure!” And he absolutely enjoyed it and only fussed once when I said it was time to go. (I guess the Association of Toddlers would have been upset with him if he didn’t kick up at least a bit of fuss; they probably threatened to withdraw his membership.)

He wanted ice cream next, I said “No problem, let’s get some.” He insisted on getting 2 cups of ice cream, I said “Is that all?” Hah just kidding. I didn’t actually say that, but I agreed. At the rate he was going with his good behaviour, if he had asked for the whole freezer of ice cream I would probably have asked the cashier, “How much for the whole freezer?”

Anyway, he’s happily eating his ice cream and I asked to have a bite and he said no. I was shocked! Could this good streak be coming to an end?

“Why not, Abang?”

“Mummy you have your own ice cream.” And he dug into the plastic bag to get me the other cup (remember, he insisted on 2 cups?). Just as he was about to hand it to me, he stopped and with a drop-dead serious look on his face, he asked, “Mummy, are you well behaved?”

It was all I could do to stop myself from rolling on the floor, laughing. “Um, well,” I hesitated, with a thoughtful frown on my face, “I think so. Yes. Yes, I am well behaved.”

Now it’s his turn to frown and consider whether Mummy really has been well behaved. “Hmmm… Yes, you are well behaved, kan?”

And so, Mummy got to eat ice cream today. I guess modern day parenting includes parenting the parent as well!