On spanking

So there I was at daycare, for five minutes trying to convince Lyla to put on her jacket. All my usual appeals weren't working. Mama, dinner, the car, the puppies--nothing was worth putting on that jacket. I tried to help her into it, and she went limp and oozed herself to the floor.

"Lyla, I am going to count to three."

She stood up. "No, Dada!"

And out the door into the hallway she ran.

"Lyla! One."

A two-year-old was outsmarting me.

"Two."

She stopped by the baby room, face pressed against the door's glass. Ordinarily this would be a wonderful time for us to stop and talk about babies.

"Three. Lyla, we need to--"

"No, Dada!"

There I stood, stupid and utterly impotent. She turned her attention back to the baby room door as though I did not exist. When she tried to run past me again, I snagged her around the waist, stuffed her wiggling extremities into her jacket, and hauled her to the exit with calm on my face but a boiling ocean in my stomach.

"Down, Dada! No! NOOOOOOOOOO!"

I understand why people spank their kids. I don't think it's ethical and I don't plan to ever do it, but it's not difficult to relate to the kid-spankers of the world. When you're stressed out, have a toddler deliberately disobeying, and don't see any obvious natural consequences to employ, then there you are.

Oh yes: and you're not a friend or teacher or uncle or grandma, either. You're the parent, so to the misbehaving child there's nothing novel or special about you at all, nothing to inspire obedience in this public place besides--and that's where spanking comes from.

So how do you avoid becoming a spanking parent (or a sarcastic parent, a sullen parent, a screaming parent, or anything else that's probably worse than spanking)? I don't know. It does occur to me, though, that if I had a cookie in my pocket, I could've told Lyla that only girls with jackets on get to eat cookies. Hell, a saltine would've done it.

What you do is get smarter.