Mummy Wins! Aki Wins! Oral Hygiene Wins!

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January 16, 2012.  Around 7.40 in the evening.

At.Long. Last. My first real win in a negotiation session with Aki. I have a lot of pending entries in the pipeline but since we are yaya-less ( Lotlot is on AWOL ), those blog entries will just have to wait.

My mom got Aki new toothpastes which he was excited to try. He pushed a chair to the kitchen sink, stood on the chair and asked for a toothbrush. I asked him to choose among three of this five toothbrushes. He chose his Firefly toothbrush. We have a pre-brushing ritual after putting toothpaste on the brush – sawsaw, halo-halo, taktak. We were on to a good start. After letting me brush his molars, he decided he is done and rushed to the living room. After wrestling with him in the sofa for a few minutes as I tried to brush his teeth, I had a light bulb moment.

I picked up his Thomas “Chuchu (short pause) Chen” which I took out of the box just last Sunday and announced, ” If you won’t let me brush your teeth, No Thomas for tonight. I will count one to ten, If you are not ready when I reach 10, I will put your train away. One, Two, ….”

Before I reached 6, he was standing in front of me with a wide, fake, irritated smile (see last picture in this post).  I could not believe it! It was my first time to do a countdown and it worked like magic! He let me brush his teeth to my hear’ts content.

Because he was cooperative, I didn’t just let him play with his train, I helped him connect the tracks and as a bonus, put a new battery on slow-moving Thomas!

And you know what?  It worked again this evening. After he let me brush his molars, he ran again to the sofa.  I followed him and reminded him that no toothbrush means no Thomas. No more countdown this time. He sat quietly and cooperatively on the sofa and let me brush, brush, brush his teeth!

P.S.  Thomas is currently in captivity in one of our kitchen cabinets.

Blog Source: Familia Kiki

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