�Child psychology works on adults. It doesn�t work on toddlers.� Thus spake my father on the problems of child rearing.

My dad used to be head of human resources for a large corporation. He did a lot of hiring and firing in his day and had to deal with a lot of disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-employees. He swore by a child psychology book by Haim Ginott as methodology for getting through tough H.R. situations.

I picked up a used copy of Haim Ginott�s Between Parent and Child not long ago. I�m not actually a big reader of child-rearing literature, except as a social document (and as such, I really need to get around to reading Ann Hulbert�s Raising America: Experts, Parents and a Century of Advice About Children, which looks fascinating.). But Ginott actually sounds sensible and practical. His essential argument is that we need to treat kids like people, to respect them and their ideas, but at the same time offer them structure and let them know what the rules are and have high but age-appropriate expectations of them so they don�t become overly dependent.

One of his suggestions is that when something the child doesn�t like needs to happen, offer the child a choice of some sort between two things where you can live with either choice. For instance, in my dad�s H.R. example, he would say, �Sorry, this isn�t working out with you in this job. Would you like to leave right away, or would you like to leave in two weeks to give yourself some time to get things sorted out?� My dad said this worked beautifully every time with grownups. They felt less trapped than if they�d just been told what to do, and felt like they�d saved some face

Kids, however, are not fooled by this kind of trickery � perhaps there are some advantages to not yet having learned the rules of the game. AJ currently has to take some medicine to help with his cough. If he doesn�t take it, he wakes up several times at night coughing and is exhausted the next day. But it tastes terrible (I know, I tried it to see what all the fuss was about). So I tried to pull a Ginott on him. �Do you want to take your medicine now, or do you want to take it after you brush your teeth?� He didn�t bat an eyelash. He saw through the ruse immediately. His eyes narrowed slightly and he set his jaw. �I no want to take medicine.� (although he�s mostly talking in everyday English,he still reverts to caveman where negative constructions are concerned. This becomes very confusing when he drops the opening pronoun. Then we are forced to determine whether he is saying, �No, [I]want breakfast,� or �[I] no want breakfast.�)

So much for child psychology.

In the end what save the day was TV. Yesterday he was watching Caillou while I was taking a shower. Caillou got sick and had to take medicine that he didn�t want to take, but he did it because he knew it would make him feel better.

I�m grateful for assistance in any form, but it does make you understand how people can blame all the bad things kids do on TV. It is frighteningly influential, at this age at least.

It should also be noted that this type of questioning usually does NOT work for two good things. AJ is frequently completely undone by questions like �Do you want a chocolate or the strawberry ice cream cone?� or �Would you like to have the fire engine or the race car toy?� But that is just because he knows exactly what he wants: he wants it all.

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