My Name is Roger

Last spring my husband and I went to see a presentation by Paul Gasser, family therapist and "Love and Logic" guru. Although we didn't solve all our parental woes in two hours, we did enjoy a story he told of a man in a grocery store with his small child.

The man had a screaming toddler in his cart, and no matter how loudly the boy screamed, the man just kept calmly talking and saying things like, "It's OK, Roger." and "It will be over soon, Roger." and "Should we buy Coke or Pepsi, Roger?"

Mr. Gasser explained how impressed he was by this man's patience, so before he left the store, he stopped the man and asked his secret, "How are you so patient with Roger?" The harried father just looked at Gasser with a sort of blank look on his face and then said, "My name is Roger."

We enjoyed this example immensely, and it told us that we were not alone in dealing with screaming children in public places. It also told us that it is OK to ignore the screaming child and take care of ourselves. So the next time we had a screaming Carson in the store, we looked at each other and smiled and said, "It's OK Roger. It will be over soon."

Our son Carson, however, was not to be so easily dismissed. After about the third time his daddy and I did our "Roger" routine, Carson let us know he had had enough. "Stop!" he said. "I not Roger, I Carson!"

And last night he topped even that. All four of us, me, daddy, Carson, and German brudder, Ole, were traveling home in the van from our shopping trip. Carson was feeling especially crabby because we had left the store without a toy, so he started accusing his German brother of hitting him. It wasn't true but Carson was insisting I scold Ole. "Tell him that's not nice, Mommy!"

Daddy who was trying to figure out Carson's game asked Carson what was going on in the little head of his. That's when he smiled evilly and said, "My name's Roger!" We all started laughing and wondering where that came from since we had not said anything about Roger. I wondered if we have created a monster, an alter ego for our little Carson. What HAVE we done!

I am wondering if the next time all the kleenexes are pulled out of the box and scattered around the living room if I'm going to hear, "Roger did it." I need to do some more research to see if "Love and Logic" has any advice about taming my child's evil alter ego! In the meantime I guess I'll just have to tell Carson that Roger is not welcome in our house!