'Cause That's Just How His Mind Works

My son (turning five this July) will rarely relinquish control of, well, anything. I find myself wresting items from his hands many times per day when requests to "put that down" fall on deaf ears. Interested in trying ANYTHING to stem the tidal wave of contrariness, we (re)instituted a token/reward system the other day to motivate two specific behaviors: exiting the car in the driveway and coming into the house in a timely fashion, and pottying when Daddy or I ask. I just used potty as a verb. To potty. The word has obviously lost all of its original--and hideous--meaning and taken on a wacked life of its own. I'm doomed.

Anyhoo. Back to the intransigent one. See? I made up for the potty thing before you could bat an eyelash. He earned two tokens right away and traded them in for a balsa glider. Today he has a grand total of four tokens. He can get a better toy/activity/experience than an old glider by trading in FIVE tokens. So this afternoon, as he danced and hopped and leaped and held in that waste, I said, "Go to the potty, boy!"

He replied, as he has for YEARS, "No. I don't need to." Leap. Leap. Hop. Hop. Clutch.

Veeeeery enticingly, I said, "You can earn one more token! That's all you need to get a BETTER toy!!!"

"No thanks." Hop. Clutch. Sprint.

Hehe. I should write a book on child rearing. Really I should. It will be called, "Everything you told me I should try and I did didn't work so please why don't you take my child for two weeks and when you yourself find that your methods are shite then I promise not to say I told you so when you return him to me." Would you buy that? Maybe Oprah could have me on. I suppose those child-rearing methods work for the kids in the middle. But my child isn't typical. Not average by any stretch.

This is a little song he wrote about a month ago.

(He's obviously into really short phrasings.) The lyrics, in case you couldn't tell from his atrocious spelling, are "Die die die die die die die." I'm sure you did divine that the title of this ditty is Poopy. Or perhaps I should let his spelling stand. More poetic. And he is definitely all that, AND a bag of chips.

edited to add: Please don't be the person who thinks I'm serious when I call his spelling atrocious.