The Service Challenge

For the next 28 days our family is taking a Service Challenge. Our goal is to perform an act of service (simple or great) each day through Christmas day. At dinner each night, we will share with each other how each of us served that day. Tonight was our first night to report. Here is a sampling of that conversation:

My Son: "For my service I offered to help Derek with a job at school."
Me: "That's great!"
My Son: "Yea, but I didn't actually end up doing it."
Me: "Why?"
My Son: "I got busy doing something else."
Me: "That was a good try... Next time you should try to do what you said you would do."
My Son: "Ohhhh, okay. I also talked to someone I don't normally talk to."
Me: "That's great."

Me: "For my service, I drove my son to school."
My Son: "Yea, I wrote about that in persuasive writing."
Me: "Really?"
My Son: "Yeah, cause you know, I had to kind of whine to get you to take me? That's what persuasive writing is. Persuading someone to do something."

[Pause- My thoughts at this point: 1.) That rascal KNOWS what he's doing! 2.) Good thing he isn't playing his cards too close to the chest... I don't think I'll alert him to that fact. 3. What am I up against?] 

Me: "I drove you to school because I wanted to. Not because you whined." (Which whining, for the record, was minimal and a huge improvement in attitude from the past couple of weeks.)
My Son: "Oh. It was your service?"
Me: "Yes."