The boy, he tests my limits

Sam's been a handful the last few days. He knows what gets under my skin and makes sure to continually improve his annoyance techniques so I've been having to resort to more draconian methods than usual. I've been trying to get him to do timeouts on the steps and the problem with that is that he generally goes there willingly but then he taunts me by not staying down and then he laughs as he struggles to get up. To get him to stay there I have to either hold him there or stand there and give him the evil eye and frankly, both of those reward bad behavior by giving him attention so it's not working at all. He will, eventually, apologize and also state back his bad behavior and promise not to repeat it.

Today we went to the library to pick a fresh batch of books. We were looking at the new books and Sam picked one up and threw it on the floor. I told him not to do that. He did it again and I told him that if he did it one more time we were leaving. You know what happens next although at least he put some time between the warning and his lovely gesture of sweeping an entire stack of books on the floor and refusing to put them back.

I handed the stack of books we were going to check out to the librarian, apologized since she was going to have to reshelve them, and we left without any books. Sam seemed more surprised than upset by this but I hope it made enough of an impact that he'll listen in the future since he loves his library books.

After dinner today he was following me around grabbing on to my dress and pulling repeatedly, laughing like a lunatic, while I was trying to clean up the kitchen. I made him go to the stairs and once again, it really wasn't cutting it. He wasn't staying, he wasn't listening, and he found the whole thing amusing. I decided to go in for the kill. "Sammy, if you don't stay out of the kitchen and let me finish cleaning up without interruptions I won't read any stories before bed tonight, do you want that?"

I think I finally found something he valued enough that consequences of his actions outweighed the fun of annoying me. He apologized and actually stayed out of my way.

I just don't like having to threaten to take things away in order to get him to do as I'd like, I'd like him to want to do as I ask without the constant challenge. I know it's his job to test me but this is really tedius and annoying. Urgh! I know it only gets worse as he gets older.