His lips are moving, but...

Henry speaks well and clearly, and what he says makes sense, and yet he is not rational.  He is not a rational being, at least not all the time, and this is what makes parenting him so frustrating and tricky these days.  He will absolutely go to the mat arguing for something that, it turns out, he doesn't even want or believe!  And yet sometimes, of course, he is saying something important that does really represent his feelings.  How to tell the difference?  

It's hard to give an example, because they mostly are long negotiations that get increasingly off the rails until you suddenly realize there is no way to resolve this with talking.  (Maybe a little bit like the Middle East?)  Today's nap was a case in point.  He didn't want to take it.  Now, normally you ignore that predictable opposition, and move ahead anyway.  But it is true that he sometimes doesn't need a nap; that after his last nap on Wednesday he didn't sleep well; and so on.  Nonetheless, he seemed tired and whiny so I decreed a mandatory quiet-and-dark time in the bed.  He fought; he cried; he raged.  I tried my usual enforcement regime of carrots and sticks but still no progress was being made.  Then he struggled to master his emotions and tell me calmly that he really wanted his lights on and to play quietly in his room.  Okay, I thought, fine; maybe I'm wrong-- he can just play quietly instead.  (It was the pseudo-calm that got to me.)  But then he changed his position and began insisting on going downstairs and eating a miniature pizza and a large chocolate bar.  This was the pod-person moment, the realization that I had been led down the garden path and squandered 15 minutes trying to reason with a tired 3-year-old.  Nonetheless, negotiations continued.  I made my final offer: a drink of milk.  He accepted, if I was willing to throw in a change into his pj's.  Exhausted, furious, frustrated, I returned with the milk to the scene of my little blond boy snuggling into his bed.  "Mama, can you organize my covers, tuck me in, and give me a kiss?"  And then he rolled over and went immediately to sleep.