Dad reports:
Tommy is talkative but has turned helpful outside splitting the wood. He is being pleasant and we are having a good time together.
Parenting focus: Right now, my focus with Tommy is trying to get him to talk in the positive instead of the negative. We can tell a child “Don’t run” (begative) or we can tell them “Walk” (positive). Tommy seems, and always has, absolutely hyperfocused on the negative. He and I were talking about the fact that I’ve got a burn permit and as soon as we can get the splitter out of the neighbor’s yard and into ours that we could start a fire. He becames excited over roasting marshmellows and said “let’s go buy some” to which I replied “I think we have some in the house” but he was compelled (and I mean compelled by he kept on and on and on about it) to focus on the negative of “what if there are no marshmellows” and when I finally got him thinking about the fact that we probably have some he changed the discussion to “well if we had marshmellow but we couldn’t find them then I would be wrong and you would be wrong also.” Again, bring the conversation around to a negative with the concept of “wrong.” With each consecutive conversation we had while splitting wood he created ways to put a negative spin on the conversation.
It’s hard to be happy when you see everything as negative.