They are Badd

The older Mark gets, the harder it is to discipline him. Time outs aren't as effective as when he was a little guy, and he still doesn't care if I take stuff away from him.

So I have to be much more creative. He doesn't care about things, but he loooooves music.

One day, as I was driving, I noticed him squirming in the back seat and asked what was wrong.

"Please change the station!" he yelled, as though he couldn't hold it in one more second.

I looked at the dial--NPR radio. Apparently, Mark is not a fan.

But NPR isn't on all the time, and regular public radio didn't seem to faze Mark, so I could only torture him with it during the early evening. Plus, Mark finally grew big enough to move up to the front seat, where he could control the radio himself. There are no more plaintive cries of "Change it!!!" Now, he just tears through the playlist himself. 

And then...I got satellite radio.

I love it. Now, not only can I punish Mark with annoying music, I can really tailor it to his mood. When he's only mildly obnoxious, I put on Radio Margaritaville. (He is not a Parrot Head.) When he's a little more snotty, I put on the Broadway Standards station. And when he's REALLY mouthy, I hit him with the hardest thing I've got--Oprah Winfrey's OWN radio station. Boy, does he ever hate that one!

I have so much fun annoying Mark with the radio that now I do it when he's not being naughty. I can almost drive Mark to tears by blasting Norah Jones, and he hates pretty much anything they play on the 80s station.

"Oh, yeah!" I cheered yesterday, when a cheesy 80s song came on. 

"What is this?" Mark scoffed.

"Color Me Badd," I schooled him. "They were bad. All the guys in the band were wanna-bes. There was a George Michael look-alike, a Kenny G lookalike, an Arsenio Hall look-alike, and some weirdo Vanilla Ice wannabe who danced around in overalls with no shirt."

"I don't even know who any of those people are," Mark said. He reached forward to change the song, and I slapped his hand away.

"I did it all for loooooove!" I sang.

Mark clapped his hands over his ears.

"Let me change it!" he cried.

"No," I answered. "I had to listen to these bad songs growing up, so you do, too." 

He grew desperate. "No, I don't have to listen to it," he begged. "You don't, either. Nobody has to listen--we can change the station!"

I stopped singing for a moment--he was right, we didn't have to listen to it. But I saw the desperation, the pleading in his eyes, and I shook my head.

"It's not that bad," I said, and resumed my singing.

"Yes," Mark answered, plugging his ears. "It is that bad."

And he was right. It was bad. But boy, did that kid behave well the rest of the day. All I had to do was rattle my car keys, and he stepped up to help me.

It was awesome.