Civil Disobedience and Non Violent Protest has a rich and storied heritage. Gandhi lead hunger strikes, Rosa Parks refused to move and Martin Luther King marched. My son, in what may be the first act of resistance to my staying home with Emma and without him, peed his pants in the middle of preschool. This came on the heels of a crying fit when he was dropped off.
I had just put Emma down for her first nap of the day when the call came in. It was his teacher needing a change of clothes. That meant I had to wake Emma up, put her in a car seat, drive to school, and control the urge to beat my son. Unlike other authority figures faced with civil disobedience I refrained from blasting him with high pressure hoses, sicking guard dogs on him, beating him or throwing canisters of tear gas in his classroom. Who says history degrees are useless! Fat lot of good it did all those past governments!
I instead deployed tactical psychology and weaponized guilt. We had a quiet chat, where I told him how glad I was to have a big boy, how impressed I was with all he was learning at school and was surprised that such a grown up kid would have an accident. Then I gave him a hug, told I loved him and asked him to do better. I told him that Emma was too little to go to school like her big brother, but she'd be there soon and I expected him to show her how it all worked. All that, a pat on the butt and back to class he went.
If that doesn't get results, maybe I'll look into that water cannon.
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