Collin - The Manipulator

Collin is stilling trying anything he can to not go to bed. We have nicknamed him the Manipulator recently because of it. As I have stated before in another post, we sometimes have to chase him down to get him into a bath. Luckly, the new house has a door at the end of the hall. I close this before heading down the hall to start the bath water. Fortunately, his room has a bathroom connected to it. I close the bedroom and the bathroom doors and only leave open the door between his room and the bedroom. There is still some chasing going on to get him into the bath.

Once in the the bath, he does not want to get out. He now has learned to sit on the drain in the bathtub to stop the water when I lift the plug to let the water out. He thinks this is hilarious and starts laughing. He is right, it's funny but I know all he is doing is delaying getting into bed even more. He will periodically lift a butt cheek up to let some water out and then sit back down to stop the water, start laughing and do it again. This happens until all of the water is out. He gets out, drys off and runs to his room because he knows it's now time to brush his teeth. I have had to brush his teeth the past few weeks because he won't do it. I am shocked that he does open his mouth to let me do it. When it's time to read books, he picks out as many as he can. I tell him only three and he continues to pick out more. Once I read the three, he wants to pick out more. I tell him it's time to get in bed and he hides behind the chair or buries his head into the seat of the chair. He eventually gets in bed (by himself or I do it). He does still ask for us to sing to him before he will fall asleep. By this time, we are both ready to go to sleep ourselves. That's a lot of work.

I have tried to do all of the above, except the bed part, out of order to see if any of it makes a difference. Not really. He knows he had to eventually go to bed.

Last night, we had friends over. Ryan read Collin several books and was about to come get one of us to put Collin into bed. Collin got out of the chair and brought a book in for Yoko to read to him. She read him another book or two and then Collin wanted me to read him a book. I could see what he was doing....delaying getting into bed......The Manipulator was at it again!