Something clicked

for me the other day.  One of my least favorite things is having the kids accuse me of NEVER doing something or NEVER letting the them do something.  Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s not, but the accusation is generally way more dramatic than the situation warrants.  So this week, I came up with a response:

Sim:  You NEVER let us go to that playground!

Me:  Then why do you keep asking, if you know I never let you?

I suddenly realized that if I’ve discovered that someone never lets something happen (for example, “You NEVER give me $500!”), I stop asking.  I don’t keep asking and then dramatically tell them they NEVER do it.  That’s silly.  They realize that they NEVER do it, I realize that they NEVER do it, we don’t have to revisit it.

Of course, this logic did not really resonate with the children, but it did help me figure out one of the reasons it’s so irritating to have the “You NEVER” statements flung at me. 

The real problem here isn’t that I NEVER let them do something.  The real problem is that I sometimes do and sometimes don’t, and when the don’ts add up, the NEVERs start flying.  This is because of intermittent reinforcement, I imagine.  I do not intend to reward the “You NEVER” statements even once, though, because extinction of this behavior is my goal.  So there’s my Applied Psychology 101 class for the day.