Bribery in Disguise

We all parent our children differently; that's why all of our kids are messed up on different levels. Whether you choose to admit it or not, your kid is messed up. Maybe not yet and maybe not a lot, but it will happen--and though some of it is environmental, I truly believe that some of it can be controlled by us: The parents. That is, after all, the job we signed up for. It just doesn't pay well.

One of the more popular and highly regarded parenting techniques is positive reinforcement. My translation: Bribery laced with motive resulting in an outcome that proves to be beneficial to the parent.

My daughter, Sweet Pea, for too long, was really mean to my other daughter, Lovey. I'm not an idiot. I know that Sweet Pea is 3-1/2 and I know she loves her little sister, and I know that siblings instigate and agitate each other (just ask my brother) but one night, in the car, Sweet Pea's outright contempt for Lovey got to the point where I could see it possibly doing some real damage down the road.

Sweet Pea "Mommy, daddy--daddy, mommy?"
Us "Yes?"
Sweet Pea (In a conspiratal voice just above a whisper) "Let's pretend Lovey isn't here."

We looked at each other, completely shocked and wide mouthed, before erupting into hopeless laughter. (Yes, we laughed, that was bad. We tried to keep it muffled, but we did giggle because the comment was funny and though we didn't want to encourage Sweet Pea by letting her hear our reaction, at the same time we couldn't ignore the undeniable humor eroding from the bomb she just let off in our car)

But poor Lovey! I looked in the back seat only to behold my scrumptious little Lovey. So cute and so sweet just sitting there in her car seat, kicking her chubby legs, smiling and nodding, completely and utterly oblivious to the lingering comment that is but one on a list of many coming from her sister as of late--comments that could very well take a bite out of this sweet little girl's character if she actually understood a word of English. I thought to myself: If we don't get on this, it's only going to get worse and pretty soon Lovey will understand what Sweet Pea is saying...and one day, probably in high school, we'll get a call that Lovey is on the top of the building with a rifle (but not our rifle because really, what Jewish person has a rifle?) yelling: "Sweet Pea was mean to me and it ruined my self-esteem and now I'll never have the confidence to go after the hot guys, and I'll always settle for being the bootie call, and my mom could have done something, but she SUCKS!!!"

So, here's what I did (and it worked AND it cost less than 5.00!)

I asked Sweet Pea what she wanted more than anything in the world. She asked for a Snow White costume. Shocker. Fine. Done. No problem...but she had to earn it.

We went to the store and we looked for Disney stickers and poster board. I let her pick out any color poster board she wanted. I'm a giver. She picked blue. It was 69 cents (I only remember the price because it was 69 cents and I'm immature). We already had markers at home so we were ready to rock. Side note: If you don't already have markers or crayons at home, you're pretty much already failing as parent, but thanks for that because you have actually succeeded in making me feel better about how I'm doing.

When Sweet Pea went to bed that night, I decorated the 69 cent poster board with the Disney stickers and, using the markers, I made a path that mapped out "The Road to Snow White." (This is the part where you are probably rolling your eyes and mumbling to yourself, "This isn't new. I've done this before, whatever with her!"  But listen--I told you I was going to "Jessica Seinfeld" the hell out of this blog in my first post, so you were warned, so whatever with YOU).

The next morning, Sweet Pea was all excited when she saw my very beautifully decorated 69 cent poster board and we went over the rules: If you're nice to your sister, you move up the road. If you're mean, you move back. The object is to get to end. That's how you'll get your Snow White costume. I found a Snow White magnet lying around so that is what I used as the "mover piece." Sweet Pea wanted that Snow White costume BAD so she was ready to rock.  Thankfully she messed up quite a bit in the beginning because I still needed some time to actually acquire the costume. The whole process took about a month and it actually worked out very well. In fact, towards the end, we sometimes forgot all about our original motive of Sweet Pea being nice to Lovey and just started arbitrarily moving the magnet mover piece back whenever she pissed us off, and moving it forward whenever she wasn't bugging us.

The icing: When Sweet Pea made it to the end of the poster board path, my girlfriend, Busy, had a Snow White costume that her daughter grew out of so I got the prize for FREE. (If it's free, it's ME). Busy even dry cleaned it for us. Sweet Pea was beyond excited to get her Snow White costume, and she genuinely earned it. We were very proud of her, she was proud of herself and quite unexpectedly, in the days since the poster board has been put away, it has become almost habit for Sweet Pea to continue being nice to Lovey... at least when I'm looking.