My son resisted cleaning up his toys but loved beating me at games. Once when he was three I took advantage of his competitive spirit by dividing his blocks into two piles, assigning one pile to him and the other to myself and then telling my son that we will race to see who puts away all of his blocks first. My son smiled, indicating that he was going to play my game, making me proud of my parenting skills.
At the contest’s start my son grabbed a bunch of my blocks, ran outside of his room and threw the blocks down our stairs. When he returned I laughed so hard that the game ended.
True story:
My son resisted cleaning up his toys but loved beating me at games. Once when he was three I took advantage of his competitive spirit by dividing his blocks into two piles, assigning one pile to him and the other to myself and then telling my son that we will race to see who puts away all of his blocks first. My son smiled, indicating that he was going to play my game, making me proud of my parenting skills.
At the contest’s start my son grabbed a bunch of my blocks, ran outside of his room and threw the blocks down our stairs. When he returned I laughed so hard that the game ended.
My son recently joined LessWrong.