"I Don't Care"

Sam has started replying with "I don't care" to any request he doesn't agree with. For example, "Sam, you need to drink your milk," is replied to with "Why? I don't care." Or "Sam, pick up your wrappers, you're making a mess," is met with "I don't care." Telling him to stop saying it wasn't working, which meant Ben and I had to come up with a discipline plan. Maria has usually stopped such behavior after being asked, and Sam really hasn't misbehaved much since starting school, and the threat of an occasional time out was still working. But we thought he is starting to grow out of time-outs, so we came up with a punishment we thought would stop the "I don't care" immediately.

Of course it wasn't that simple. Last night after dinner was the first attempt at the new plan. Sam said "I don't care," and I responded with "You may not say I don't care to us anymore. It's not polite. Next time, you won't be able to play Super Mario Galaxy if you say that." He was playing at the time and has been playing that game a lot.

Sam: You mean I'll never get to play it again?
Me: No, just for the rest of the night.
Sam: So I will be able to play again when I get up in the morning?

And I can see where this is headed. He is trying to decide if getting his way is worth giving up Mario for a few hours if he knows he can get it back in the morning. And this is not a scenario we had anticipated, since we are somewhat inexperienced at this punishment thing. So it ended up he grudgingly drank his milk without saying "I don't care" again, and later he caught himself saying "I don't care" and quickly changed it to "I mean, I do care."

But I can tell we are going to have to have quite a plan laid out for the next time we need to enforce a punishment.