Anybody Got A Nice Cheese Pairing to Go With This Whine?

We allllllmost made it. Only a few steps from the front door of Ian's school and then he remembered the complaint he had forgotten during almost the whole walk.

"Mooooom," he says, wiggling, squinting up his face and slowing down like a dog you want to just start dragging by his leash (if he had one, which he doesn't, I promise, though I've thought of it). "I don't waaaant to goooo to schoooollll. I don't waaaant toooo gooooooo. I waaaant tooo staaaaay aaaat hooooome."

My answer is only: "You can't stay home because then you won't grow up to be a rich doctor." He doesn't get this. I keep pulling him by his mittened hand but decide to be open to his concerns (or at least appear that way).

So I ask him: "Why don't you want to go to school?"

"Because I want to stay home."

"But home is boring. Nothing happens at home. What do you want to do at home?"

"I want to play with my toys."

Of course, this is understandable. What child doesn't want to play with his toys?

"But what about the toys in your class? What about the video games at school that you like to play with on the computer?" But then I'm sorry to have said this, because it makes him remember that we don't have video games at home. Fool! This starts a line of questioning from him about wanting a video game and me answering "No Way" (see yesterday's post).

So then we're back to: "I don't waaaaant toooo gooo," with me dragging and him whining like a Nebraska cornhusker.

I have no strategy for this, and realize it will be a long war of attrition, with my patience and hair color as the main casualties. It's not just this year. It's next year, and it's 13 more years after that, and then it's hoping he doesn't drop out of college to travel the world and find himself. I don't have strategies for any of those things.

"Ian, you just have to go to school. That's it. Sorry. I don't know what to tell you."

He looks at me, disappointed, not that he has to go to school but that I don't have a more convincing argument. For a split second, I could swear he looks as if he even knows that it's his job to be difficult and my job to convince him of everything from the importance of toothbrushing after meals to the hazards of running at the pool.

If anyone else out there has figured out the argument that will make a kid want to go to school, or brush his teeth, or not run at the pool... I'm all ears.