Trade Secret

I have a confession to make.

On one stressful day I found myself carrying one pre-school aged daughter out of  a Chuckie-Cheese Restaurant, kicking and screaming, over my shoulder like a bag of potatoes to install her in her carseat while I rushed back into the building to retrieve her younger sister from a kind bystander and do the same with her.  We made quite a scene.

Later that week I reviewed the incident with a good friend who had a child the same age as my daughter.  This friend was an only child and had just one child.  I had been the eldest of six children and was now the mother of two children.  I presumptiously thought I should know more about children than my friend due to the fact I'd had so much more exposure to them.  Ha ha!

My friend suggested to me that I "brief" my children before going out with them.  This seemed so laughably simple that I secretly doubted it would have any effect on children so young.  However, I had nothing to lose in giving it a try.

This is how it worked.  I would chat with my "captive audience" as I drove them to our destinations -- they in their carseats and me at the wheel.  "Where are we going?" I would ask.  They would tell me, "We are going to the store," or wherever it was we were going.  I would then ask, "How do we behave at the store?"  They would tell me how they thought they should behave.  If needed, we would chat about why that behavior was expected or review the expected behavior or coach about the expected behavior.  Before we disembarked from the car I would ask, "How will you know when it is time to leave?" and they would say that they would know it was time to go when I said it was time to go.  Then I would ask, "What will happen if you don't come when I say we are leaving?"  They would suggest a penalty that was so severe that I would never resort to its implementation.  I would say, "I don't think we need to do that.  Let's think of something else."  They would then suggest something so lenient that it would not serve as sufficient incentive to cooperate.  I would say, "That probably won't work.  Let's think of something else."  By now we would usually settle on something that was agreeable to us all.

It worked like magic.