"How many energies do you have?"
“How many energies do you have?”
Leo asks me this question many times a day.
Energies of 6 or above mean I can take him for a walk, do a scavenger hunt with him, or play hide and seek. But if I’m at a 3 or below, I can only read him a story or watch a movie.
I started the “energy” thing as a way to avoid punishing him for doing perfectly normal four-year-old things that drive me up the wall, like running away when it’s time to leave or refusing to brush his teeth at bedtime.
I know these are typical things that post-toddlers do. It is okay for him to do them and it would be unreasonable for me to expect him to not do them. But. For whatever reason, these things take a lot of energy out of me.
I used to just threaten him: “If you don’t put your shoes on, we can’t play hide and seek later.”
But it makes more sense to just be HONEST with him: when I give all my energy to things that frustrate me, I have much less of it for fun things, like Stuffy Stories or gymnastics. The two are directly related, and by using the language of energy, he knows that I’m not punishing him for his behavior— I literally can’t do high-energy activities after he’s made me chase him through the whole house at 8am, refusing to put on shoes.
It’s been hard for me to learn how to do it, but I’m tracking my own internal resources and recruiting Leo as my partner in using them wisely so we both have better days. And when I describe this to him— even though he’s only 4– he gets it. It’s worked much better for us than punishments ever did because this system is based on building an honest relationship with him and helping him understand the real-world consequences of his behavior.
And when he can’t help himself and does something that zaps my energy away, he usually asks how he can help me get it back so we can do something awesome later, like forcing Biff to sit through a whole puppet show or a modern acrobalance routine we learned from TikTok.
Which, thankfully, cost zero energies to watch from the couch. 😂😂😂