Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from Karen

This morning, I asked Samuel to pick up his pajamas off the floor and to make his bed, then we could go eat breakfast. House rule. He didn't want to. He whined. He complained. He fussed. I left. Ten minutes later, he was still sitting on his floor, pj's at his side, bed unmade, whining, complaining, and fussing.

"If you had picked up your pajamas and made your bed when I asked you to, you would be downstairs eating breakfast already," says I.

I go downstairs again, but my ears cannot ignore the sounds emerging from Samuel's bedroom.

He's still sitting on the floor, but I notice that the poster on his bedroom door (with his picture in the middle, his name at the top, and various things he's good at written around it) has an addition: "Mommy doesn't love me." I go berserk. We've had this discussion a million times. I've tried reason ("Of course I love you."), I've tried guilt ("I CARRIED YOU IN MY BELLY FOR NINE MONTHS, YOU INGRATE!"--ok, I didn't say the ingrate part), I've tried hugs and kisses. But whenever I discipline him, he goes for the same old line: Mommy doesn't love me.

So after I get a stack of paper and a pencil, I tell him to write lines: My Mommy loves me very much.

I think we've finally reached an understanding.