Never Say Never Son

Y’all all know the old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.” That’s been the theme, if you will, around our house lately. While we were at Jon’s parent’s James started having these little moments of despair (when he wouldn’t get his way, of course) where he would state that if we didn’t let him, he was never coming back to SuSu’s again. Never. The first time he said it, I didn’t quite know what to say in return. We had just had a HUGE episode and battle of the wills and I was a slightly frustrated with him and totally over his outburst. So, instead of getting on to him for saying it, I just shrugged my shoulders and said “Oh well, that will be sad for you.” Talk about turning the tables on the little rascal. Now he was the one who was shocked and didn’t know how to respond. Ha!

He makes that statement at least twice a day now or every time he’s in a foul humor and not getting his way. Of course, it’s not always that he wont go back to SuSu’s. No, our 'too smart for our good sometimes' son has gotten rather inventive with his threats since he can’t seem to get a rise out of us. He continues to think of new things to try and break us with so that we will say “Oh, no we don’t want you to do that!! Of course you can have what ever you want.” He’s come up with some pretty good stuff but nothing that has broken us yet!

He will say “If you don’t let me, I’ll never play with you again” or “I’ll never be your best friend again” or "I’ll never go any where ever again” or (and this is my personal favorite) “If you don’t let me, I’ll never go in the shed with daddy again.” The first time he said that, I couldn’t help but bust out laughing!!! You see, Jon likes to take James outside with him to do “manly stuff” and they usually go out and work on something in the shed. Well, this perceptive little son of ours knows that that’s special to Jon so he was gonna try and hurt him enough so Jon would give in to his demands. Hilarious! Well, after I quit laughing (which by the way just made James cry harder and say it louder) I told him that would just be sad for him because he would miss out on lots of fun stuff with daddy. But it’s still one of his favorites to throw out there. And yesterday he bumped it up a notch by saying to me “If you don’t let me, I wont love you again.” Now, I must admit, that one got to me a little and I told him that made me sad, real sad. So he changed it to “I’ll never hold Tookie again.” But that didn’t last long and soon he was begging to hold her. After he’d gotten his fix of the baby and ran off to play, Audrey looked at me and said “Bubba said he didn’t love you but, me and Tookie do!” Us girls gotta stick together.