Actually, I knew it was an especially severed case almost immediately. Gabe has a progression of tantrum throwing. He starts with the "dweedling" (this is an obscure reference to a friend of mine who, once upon a time, would convince us to do things he wanted us to by getting in our faces and saying, "Dweedle, dweedle, dweedle" forever until we caved in--and, though it's obscure, I find it particularly relevant)--he unabashedly keeps repeating his request (this is the whining part, but he carries it throughout the tantrum) until I cave in. If I don't, he starts sobbing. About a minute into the sobbing, he usually progresses to the guilt-laying stage by saying, "I am crying because you are mean." To which I invariably reply, "YOU are mean for being emotionally manipulative." For some reason, he always blows that response off. The next step is making threats. His go-to threat is "I'm not going to play with you anymore." At first we tried to talk him out of this threat, but now we usually just say, "That's fine. I'll just play with Norah instead." That tends to break him out of that funk quickly. If he still hasn't gotten what he wants and it's something he REALLY wants, this is where the tantrums begin. If it's severe enough, he'll work himself up to a state where he literally can't breath.
Today, he skipped from the whining straight to the working himself into a frenzy state, so I knew he meant business. I needed a quick remedy.
I tried to counter, as I always do, with "fun" alternatives that he always does--playing with his blocks, watching a movie upstairs, reading a book, driving his cars around, whatever. None of it worked for him. There was a serious playground fixation in place.
So I quickly visited my repertoire of distraction options and settled on story time. It's something we do fairly regularly, but, to date, we haven't tried anything like an involved story with actual characters and the like. Usually it's just "X is playing with Y and they have a picnic" or something simple like that. Today, I wanted him to start working on character and setting development.
So I told him to go upstairs and grab some friends. He threw down five or six of his favorites and we started to go over some back story.
First, he grabbed Nole (a white and grey dog--I didn't take new pictures, I'm afraid, but you might be able to make them out in the videos). I couldn't remember who Nole was, except that his name was Nole, so I asked Gabe what he did. "Is he an astronaut or a trash collector or an accountant or a teacher?" I spit-balled. "Trash collector!" he replied excitedly. Great start, I thought. There are a few places we could go with that.
Next was Fat Sheep, "What does Fat Sheep do?" "He's a baby!" he answered. So I put Fat Sheep in Norah's little activity saucer. Amy Horsie, it was decided, was Fat Sheep's mom. And Molly Moose was our friend Sandy (who stayed the night here last night, the only reason she was fresh in Gabe's mind--I've got a video of them playing together, too, because the kids LOVE Sandy and were being pretty entertaining last night in her honor, but I'll probably wait to post that next time). Buzz Lightyear and Soupie, it was decided, would play themselves because they are both superheroes. We had an emergency situation brewing and people were going to need rescuing.
Obviously, this was a bit of a let down when we started with something as promising as a trash collector, but emergencies are Gabe's bread and butter right now, so it wasn't the least bit surprising.
We obviously need to work on his build-ups a little. Being the "straight to business" type, Gabe didn't mess around with his saving those in trouble. What you don't see, is that the trouble was supposed to be a burglar. Unfortunately, we used the only other stuffy close by to play the role--Norah's Lulu (which is her wubbie and the doll she carries with her all the time and sleeps with). Seeing Lulu involved, Norah came and took her back before I could even get the camera set. Still, Gabe did a good job saving the day.
After the first take, I got some more video just to see how things would progress. Norah wasn't content with sitting in the wings, watching, and she got herself more involved by disrupting everything Gabe was trying to do. After the first save, Gabe did manage to build his own little storyline. He continues in the next video.
The story here was supposed to be Gabe's friends riding in a submarine to get to Tractorland and Combineland. The pillows represented the submarine. I have no idea where Tractorland and Combineland were supposed to be as Norah never let the story progress beyond putting the pillows on the floor. As evidenced by these videos, it's pretty clear that Norah's primary source of entertainment these days is doing everything in her power to annoy Gabe.
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