Last week was midterms, which meant a lot of essays, textbooks, and theory application.

I’ve been studying counseling long enough that, in theory, raising children should not feel like rocket science.

There are frameworks for this.

Developmental theories. Behavioral theories. Reinforcement. Consistency. Follow-through.

Great.

Except I forgot one very important variable:

the personality of the tiny human involved.

Our sweet three-and-a-half-year-old is clever, funny, cuddly, excellent at dinosaur classification, and wildly committed to the word no.

Tell him to do something he does not want to do and suddenly you are in negotiations with a three-foot-tall prehistoric union representative who has rejected the premise, the intervention, and possibly pants.

I tried positive reinforcement.

I tried consequences.

I tried consistency.

There was even a period of time during potty training when I basically tried to Pavlov him with gummy bears.

You know what I learned?

He does not care.

Professor Pantsless has not read the literature, but apparently he has reviewed the methodology and found it lacking.

There is something humbling about studying counseling and knowing that one day families may trust you enough to come to you for help, while at home you are in a Wild West showdown with a child who believes pants are a social construct and argues like Churchill.

So far, CBT-informed behavioral strategies have taken significant casualties.

Narrative Theory is next.

Expected collaboration? Minimal.

Expected pushback? All of it.

The real lesson is that theory can help us understand people, but people are not theories with legs.

Personality matters. Temperament matters. Relationship matters.

And no matter how much you study behavior, it is still entirely possible to be defeated by someone who is three feet tall, knows the difference between a Carnotaurus and a T-Rex, and refuses to wear pants.

Professor Pantsless: 1.
CBT: 0.