Experiments in human behavior, part 112

I told a friend, after explaining the whole Wii limitation thing, that there are many days here recently that feel like I'm living in a behavioral phychology experiement! There are times when a small change can make a world of difference and others where no matter what I do, bad behaviors abound seemingly without reason. Other days, I find my own "buttons" being pushed as one of the Boys ignores my request to brush their teeth/pick up their shoes/whatever for the 7th time, and I find myself shouting when I don't mean to or rolling my eyes at a crying 6 year old.

Case in point: Little Brother dropped his Avenger's transforming car thing as he exited the car and one of the wheels broke off. I scooped it us, thinking that I'd be able to pop the tire back on when we got into the house.

Wrong.

Thing was broken. As I showed him that it was broken and explained that I couldn't fix it, giant tears welled up in his eyes and he started to cry.

But when he shrugged off my hug and reassurances that it would be ok and cried harder, I was miffed. Why was he crying over a stupid toy?

A few minutes later, he is STILL crying and I'm now annoyed. So taking a cue from another friend (h/t Gloria), I say to Little Bro,

"Hey bud, I know you are upset about the car, but you don't need to stand here and cry over it. If you want to cry, that's fine, but you are going to need to go do it in your room. You can come back out whenever you feel better."

So he trundles off to his room, clutching the maimed toy. As I'm getting a snack for Big Bro, I can hear him wailing over his car: "My car is B-b-b-b-broken!"

He's sounds SO SAD over this silly car, that I can't help but giggle a little.

Then, I swear, not 5 minutes later, he's in the kitchen, helping himself to a snack from the snack basket, tear-stained, but clear-eyed and TOTALLY OVER IT.

What the heck.

Anywho, guess when he stopped getting attention over his crying/pouting/tantrum, it wasn't an effective means of getting attention, so he stopped. Experiments in human behavior, part 112. To be continued!