Monday, August 15, 2005
Art Of NegotiationI participate in many negotiations in my daily life. When I wake up in the morning (especially Monday), I have to negotiate with myself whether to call in sick, EL or to drag my lazy ass up to work. When I want to take a vacation, I have to negotiate with my bosses for leave. When I get a project, I have to negotiate for a longer dateline. Even when I go to the loo, I need to negotiate in order to get in first with a "let me first or else.." look.
All these negotiations seem to come natural to me. However, negotiations with a 1-year old toddler seems to be wearing me down day by day. I think my life will be shortened by a few years (luckily my number's not up for a long time) just by participating in daily negotiations with Little Skywalker.
Ever since Little Skywalker starts to develop a passion for walking, he loves to walk around in the house, outside the house, up the stairs, following people to the toilet, at the pasar malam, on the playground etc. albeit still in a drunken way. I have lost count on how many times he had fall down on his ass or knocked his head on something. Luckily he is a hard-headed guy (literally) with a meaty ass. Otherwise, he will be rushed to hospital few times a day just for head and ass trauma alone.Due to the fact that J and I (I mostly) want to bring him up in a more civilized way as compared to Asian way (where children get their "no pain, no gain" treatment), we tried our best to negotiate (or sweet talk) with Little Skywalker instead of shouting at him. Trust me, it really takes a lot of patience and self-control to negotiate with him since we were brought up the Asian way.
Every evening, we have to negotiate with Little Skywalker so that he gets a short nap around 7-8pm so that he won't be so restless at night. This are often successful attempts unless he slept through a whole afternoon in my parents' place. With him napping, J and I can do some housework without him following us (like a puppy) around the house. Other negotiations including asking him to pee and to poo, such negotiations normally ends with giving him some snacks or turn on his favourite theme song on TV.
The most difficult negotiations I've had so far with Little Skywalker is to ask him not to climb up the stairs standing. After many unfruitful attempts, I have finally came up with the idea of keeping him at the lowest step of our staircase. However, that idea still requires me to accompany him side-by-side. So far, the idea still works but I don't know how long it will last.To convince Little Skywalker to stay or walk within the confine of the living room is another big hurdle for us. We try to keep all his toys (mostly our stuff that he likes to play with) in the living room but it doesn't help. We use the evil-box (TV) as the main attraction to no avail. He still prefer to follow one of us to the kitchen, to the toilet, to the laundry area, to outdoor area, upstairs etc. although one of us is accompanying him in the living room.
Negotiating with Little Skywalker normally involves excited expressions and exclamation phrases like "Eh! Look at this!", "Look at the fan!" , "Bird bird!", "Let's go gai-gai", "Come come! got honeystars!", "Got Mum Mum!", "Look at the TV TV!", "Got ga-ga upstairs! Dark dark don't climb!"... and the list goes on and on.Well, J and I will certainly need to brush up more on our negotiation skills as he grew older and learn how to speak his mind. I would certainly hope he can talk me down one day because that would be the day he earned his own independence and my chance to retire for good.
Keep it up son!
Translation: Mum-mum (food or something that can be put into the mouth), ga-ga (something that bites which may or may not exist in real world)
Jotted down by Egghead :: at around 8/15/2005 11:32:00 AM :: and invited 7 Blah(s):
7 Blah(s) by:
5xmom.com,
Egghead,
Loc Kee,
Egghead,
Mumsgather,
Egghead,
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