Pavlov in practice aka: Colin is Creepy

Colin doesn’t like to go to sleepy even when he is obviously tired and cranky. We have the most trouble with this when we are in the car and he is screaming in his car seat. When he gets like that we turn the music up really loud in the car, and that usually calms him down and helps him sleep (counter intuitive I know). A few months ago we had a cd with both Shins albums burned onto it, and we started turning to that to calm him down since it sounds good loud, almost all the songs are good, and both Christine and I never seemed to get sick of it. Well, after months of doing this, Colin has become conditioned to the point that no matter how upset he is, as soon as the song Caring is Creepy starts, he immediately calms down. This helps a lot when his teeth are bothering him, or if he gets mad because we won’t let him play with electrical sockets. If he is calm- and even a little bit tired he will fall asleep by the time the disc gets to track 6 on Inverted World (New Slang). Lately we have been listening to the Garden State soundtrack instead since it is a pretty mellow set of tunes, and it contains both of the above mentioned Shins tracks. It’s nice to have something that works every time.