The Power of Primary

A couple of days ago on Sunday we sat down to a meal of barbequed chicken and pasta salad. Little did I know what a treat this would be for princess kryptonite cupcake as her adulation began:

"MMMMMM! oh mom this is so good! This is delicious food! Thank you so much for making me this wonderful dinner. You are such a wonderful mom! (again, this is her actual verbage, I am not embellishing.)

"Well thank you so much Sophie that is so nice of you, daddy grilled the chicken though, it wasn't all me."

"Oh daddy thank you for the chicken it is just wonderful! Thank you for this good food. I love you daddy."

Daddy says, "She seems to be laying it on a little thick."

I say: "You need to reinforce postive behavior, if you haver a child who actually says thank you and is showing appreciation, you need to appreciate and acknowledge it."

So I tell her:"THank you for being so nice Sophie, and saying thank you and being kind. I really like it when you are so nice and say thank you. That is a good girl."

She beams from ear to ear, pleased with herself and feeling good and says:"Yep! And now I'm going to heaven!"

"You are? How do you know that?"

"'cause I said nice things and my primary teacher said if I say nice things and be kind to people I'm going to heaven.And I said nice things to you so now I'm going to heaven!"

I turn to Herman. "What do I do with that? Do I just leave it at that or get into a discussion with her about "Heaven" and goodness and such or just leave it at that?"

"Just leave it at that."

And so I have for now. But I must say, the idea of going to heaven is working as pretty good motivation for her these last few days. She has been congratulating herself on making the cut for heaven for handing me a screwdriver, taking good care of her doll and speaking kindly to it,saying thank you,giving me a hug, and sharing her french fries. But she's actually trying to be good. I don't know what kind of 4 year old conception of heaven is working as this strong of a motivation for her, but it been more effective than most incentives I've been able to come up with. She's only 4 so it's not like she needs things to be all figured out right now. But she wants to be good, maybe I should just leave it at that.......for now.