This morning sucked. Rose was whining, complaining, and dragging her fingernails over every emotional blackboard she could find. David did his fair share of begging to be carried and throwing himself on the floor in agony. In between wanting to put my hands over my ears and rock, I got thinking about the range of discipline techniques we called on in order to make it back to sanity.

join forces—I woke to the Rose serenade, “I want to watch more TV. Why can’t I watch more TV Can I puleeeeeeze watch more TV? I said puleeeze!” Actually Rose didn’t wake me; John did. He wasn’t going to kill her yet, but it was definitely time for two parents to be on duty.

provide natural and immediate consequences, sort of—I didn’t get a chance to tackle the TV question because I heard John say in a not-yet-losing-it-voice, “If you ask me that one more time, there will be no TV the next TV day.” According to Brazelton, consequences should be natural and immediate like you dawdle, we miss the party. So, not immediate or particularly natural, and it just diverted the stream. Rose stopped whining about TV and started whining about my walking past her. I’m serious. She complained bitterly that I walked past the barrier she had put over the stairs.

Which leads us to—don’t engage with false issues. Talking to her about why I had not hurt her and how I had the right to walk down the stairs, etc. would just be giving her the fight she was looking for. I ignored her.

Well sort of. Unfortunately, I chose the bad parenting technique—whine back. I started talking to her in a whiny voice. I tried to justify it like I was just showing her what she sounded like, so she could hear how obnoxious it was. Uh huh. Really, it just provided me some childish gratification. John nicely pointed out that it was probably the wrong choice. Strike one for Mommy.

distract with attractive alternatives—“Hey, Rose, want to take a shower with me?” Attractive alternatives, in fact any distraction, have been an effective main stay of our discipline repertoire. “Hey, look, a garbage truck!” has broken up many a bad moment. She nixed the shower but agreed to a bike ride through the neighborhood.

solve the underlying problem—When I returned from my shower I realized it was 10:00 and neither child had had any protein yet. Cheese to the rescue! It’s even better when you head off the melt down with food, but I love the remarkable mood recovery a little sliced cheddar can bring.

Unfortunately, they weren’t done with us yet. As we tried to leave the house, David threw himself on the porch in a tizzy fit, and I could not handle him because of my bad back. That’s when John carried him downstairs to the stroller and strapped the screaming baby in while in a perfectly pleasant voice threatening to break every bone in his body. I advocate this technique (the threat not the actual carrying it out) only for children who can’t comprehend what you’re saying. I’d say David is on the borderline.

John was done by that point, so we made the excellent choice of trading off and letting him walk away. I had to do some walking away myself as Rose inched her way down the stairs complaining bitterly that I was rushing her. Luckily, I remembered not to engage with false issues and ignored her.

At first I had told her we were going on a bike ride. Then John didn’t want her to take her bike. With John gone, I compromised and said yes to the bike, and then did three techniques in a row—asked for good behavior, i.e. I’m getting the bike out if you can keep it together on our ride, explained the natural and immediate consequences of not keeping it together—an immediate turn around to home, and spoke in a not-so-nice voice. Two out of three ain’t bad.

With both kids contained, David in the stroller, Rose on her bike, things started to perk up. I just had less factors coming at me at once. A change in venue, especially to the outside where we could get some exercise all improved everyone’s mood and therefore their ability to act appropriately.

I tried making a game of it, “Hey, Rose is anybody crying or whining?” when everyone was doing just fine, but in a very nice voice, she asked me to stop doing that.

And then, I just had to let go of my anger and all was well.

At my count, that’s 19 techniques in under an hour, 16 acceptable, 3 not so good. And I survived without resorting to chocolate.