Are you sure you want to leave me at grandma's?

Usually when I want S to listen to me or to follow an instruction, invariably I find myself telling her that I will take some privilege away or threaten her with dire consequences.

I was surprised by how smartly she turned the tables on me this morning. S has been running a light temperature since the last few days, so when we decided to head out to do some Diwali shopping, we decided to leave her at her grandma's place since we also wanted to take our helper along to help out. S wasn't too happy with this situation. She started insisting that she wanted to come along too. I tried explaining to her many times that we weren't taking her because she wasn't well and didn't want her to get more sick. But none of this seemed to register. The pleading continued for a while.

Suddenly she changed tack and told me that if I left her at grandma's she would watch a lot of TV, implying that it wasn't something I would like and hence I should reconsider my decision. Tv watching at grandma's is usually uncontrolled and it's a bone of contention between my mom and me, which she is well aware of. I replied that I didn't care and she was definitely going to grandma's.

But it didn't end there. Her next words were - "I will watch so much tv and eat candy"! When I replied that I didn't care, she retorted, "I will eat 2 candies, and 3 and 4! How about that"? All this with a wicked twinkle in her eye. She knew all the things I didn't like that happened at grandma's and was throwing them in my face!

I was pretty impressed that she knew which things would bother me the most and was using them effectively. Very smart, don't you think?