Read This Blog and I'll Give You a Latte

To Bribe, or Not to Bribe - in my mind, there is no question.

Finish your broccoli and you can have dessert. Bring all the toys in from outside and you can have a popsicle. Clean up your room and you can watch 15 more minutes of t.v.
And it's not just the kids...
Perfect attendance at work for a few months and you get a $15 Starbucks card. Finish all your reports and you can leave early on Friday.
Put in your time for a couple of years and earn more vacation days.

Do I want to make it a constant bartering session to get my kids to do everything? No.
Am I ashamed that I am already formulating what bribes will best coax my son into the world of using the potty?
Absolutely not.
Somehow, I've been passed over as mother of the year in the past, so I doubt this decision to negotiate with a toddler terrorist using fruit snacks will effect the decision of the nomination committee.

I don't really recall the tactics my parents used on me until the pre-teen/teenage years, and those years were not exactly stellar on my record.
I do know that my mother is not a fan of the "time out" method and does not really buy this whole, negotiate, give choices approach. Her household is more of a benevolent dictatorship. She loves you, and her word is law. Period.

I realize that everyone eventually turns into their mother (I'm waiting to become a killer decorator/cook/keeper of the house) and I am hoping that my mother's iron will and tough love tactics will serve me well in my childrens' teen years.
Right now I am walking that fine line between new age and old school.

I'm stretching those "time out" muscles with my two year old (new age.)
But I have been known to utter the immortal old school phrase, "Because I said so!"

I am inclined to lean towards the "every situation calls for a different tactic" approach. When you have a cart full of groceries and your next in line to check out after an hour of shopping - are you really going to pick up and leave? Most likely (unless it's an extreme circumstance) no - that only punishes Mommy because then she has to go grocery shopping all over again.

It's in these instances, you know the ones where you feel like everyone is looking at you and judging you and listing off the twenty things they'd do differently - in those instances, I like to go home and queue up an episode of Super Nanny. Nothing like an episode of an eight year old biter with a mouth like a sailor to make you look at your own children with a renewed sense of gratitude.

Are my kids perfect? Enough. Are my parenting skills perfect? Well, I can't very well go and not leave my kids something to blog about when they're older, can I? That would just be irresponsible. Their therapist would be so bored otherwise.

If I need to put my son in a time out once in a while (or once an hour depending on the day) to give us both a few minutes to go to our separate corners. Great.
If M&Ms or Skittles or Gummi Bears are the key to a Pampers free world for me, I'm all for it.
If I just try my best everyday to make sure my kids are taken care of and know they're loved and go to sleep happy, then I think I deserve a glass of wine.
See, bribes really do come in all sizes.