Idle Threats

So, for the last month, we've been employing a passive threat system to coax Gabe into doing things that he's otherwise disinclined to do. It started when we found out his uncle James--or Uncle Jeebes, as Gabe called him--would be joining us for Christmas (which he's still planning on doing, provided we don't get nailed with the ice and snow that they're predicting to hit us right about the time he's supposed to be traveling here).

Not surprisingly, James was Gabe's favorite visitor last Christmas. Obviously, I wasn't around to see James grow up since he's just slightly younger than Libby, but from what I've been told, Gabe is a carbon copy of James as a toddler. I'm reasonably sure that Gabe doesn't actually remember any of last Christmas, but he's still be very excited at the prospect of James visiting.

When we first informed him that James would be visiting in about a month, he said, "Uncle Jeebes, two minutes!"

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, "two minutes" is Gabe's negotiating strategy for just about everything--and has been for a month or two now. "Gabe, it's time for dinner." "Two minutes!" "Gabe, we need to clean up your cars." "Two minutes!" "Gabe, we need to get up on the couch and read some books because it will be bed time in fifteen minutes." "Two minutes!" Obviously, his concept of proper negotiating procedures is shaky at best.

Whether he meant that Uncle Jeebes should be arriving in "two minutes" instead of a month or if he was only willing to extend the offer of our house to James for that limited amount of time, we're not sure. I guess we'll find out in a few days.

For the next two weeks, everything Gabe did that required subtle redirection involved a threat involving James. "Uncle James would go to bed when he's supposed to." "Uncle James would eat his oatmeal." "Uncle James wouldn't throw his cars at the television." We knew we were treading on thin ice since, from what I'd been told and Libby vaguely remembered of James growing up, NONE of our statements actually held true. But we did it anyway, and it met with moderate success.

Since then, however, Gabe has discovered Santa Claus thanks to the absolute innundation of the image and likeness of the fatherly Christmas philanthropist just about everywhere that Gabe looks. So we took the opportunity to link the possibilities of Christmas goodies with "being good" and Santa's omnipresent judgementalism. Now we have replaced Uncle James with Santa in all of our threats.

But not just in the threats. Whenever Gabe does something really nice and helpful, we tell him that Santa appreciates his efforts and Libby has taken to picking up the telephone and pretending to call Santa to let him know that Gabe has been a good boy. This, of course, is a bit troubling to me because it sets up a fundamental incosistency in Santa's character. Santa just knows when Gabe is being bad, but we have to call him whenever Gabe is good. This paints Santa out to be a bit of a dick, if you ask me. And his omniscience only applies to naughty acts. Still, I suppose that is all the more reason for kids to act "good" instead, since Santa is guaranteed to see when they are bad, but they have to be conspicuously good--so good that someone calls Santa and lets him know. I suppose we'll see how it plays out over the next few years.

All of these threats are quite toothless, though. Uncle James wouldn't have NOT come down if Gabe hadn't stopped throwing the cars at the television (though, I wonder what kind of mental scars it will create if the weather prevents James' trip and we explain it away to Gabe as a consequence of him being bad--we wouldn't do that, obviously, but I have to wonder all the same). And Santa won't NOT give him give gifts if he's a bit naughty (god knows--Gabe is making out like a friggin Rockefeller this year thanks to the fact that both Libby and I were picking things up for him here and there). I just hope he doesn't figure that out for a good long time.