Backfire. Again.

So Ben is the master of taking my attempts at behavior modification and tweaking them so he remains in control. Classic example ahead:

Ben has always enjoyed pretending he's a puppy. Bring a puppy into the home and he REALLY enjoys pretending to be a puppy.

Ben has always been very affectionate. Lately he's been overly affectionate.

Now let's combine those two behaviors, shall we? He has been sharing his penchant for kisses with Lily, our puppy. He wakes up in the morning and goes to her crate and gives her puppy kisses through the bars. Like licking puppy kisses. Tongue to tongue. On the mouth. Get the nasty picture? He thinks it's so hilarious, of course. I think it's disgusting, but can't call too much attention to it or that reinforces the behavior. Ugh. One day he even turned to me and said, "tastes like strawberry milkshakes." (insert ewwwww here). Distraction has been the key method of choice.

Until yesterday.

I noticed him licking Lily "on the mouth," as he puts it, through the crate so I took his hand and led him to the bathroom. I calmly said, "hmm, we'd better clean up your mouth from all those puppy germs." I took a small bead of soap and rubbed his teeth, tongue and lips until there was a sense of clean, bubbly niceness, and then said, "All right, there we go, nice and clean now" and walked away.

He was suitably surprised by the experience.

Then there were tears, which I judge were from the surprise, the discomfort, and the feeling that I came out on top in this one.

So he figured out how to reclaim control.

Have you ever seen the movie Bedtime Stories? At the end, a bee stings Adam Sandler on his tongue. His tongue gets all swollen so he talks with a big fat tongue protuding from his mouth. You can't understand a word.

That is how Ben has been talking for the last 24 hours. There is no end in sight.

So tag, I'm it, to figure out a way to reclaim control, just so he can figure out a way to claim it back. That is our endless cycle of behavior management here.

Sigh.