We no longer negotiate with children in this house...

Well maybe sometimes... and maybe if they are well behaved and quiet....

I declare that in my house, we are no longer a democracy, but a dictatorship, and I am the dictator (okay... co-dictator... the other parent has a say too...sometimes...). This house shall no longer be ruled by an eight-year-old tyrant.

I am just so tired of asking for things over, and over, and over, and over again. And these are not even big, time consuming, absolutely no fun things like clean your room. All I want is for my daughter to wash her hands and come to dinner. This should not take twenty minutes.

Though I want to encourage my daughter's preparation to become a lawyer (the child tries to find any technicality to weasel her way or bargain her way out of doing things), the countless minutes/hours of negotiating with her to do the littlest thing is grating on my nerves. Why must everything be done in “five minutes, mom?” which in child time spans can range from anywhere from an actual five minutes to half an hour.

All I want is a couple of days in a roll (I have even given up the hope of it lasting a full week) of me not leaving my house in the morning angry, because we wasted half our morning 'negotiating' an extra five minutes of TV or five minutes of petting the dog, which if you think about it is not that bad, but my daughter is a dawdler and is easily distracted, by air molecules... that extra 10 minutes is the difference between a leisurely, happy stroll to school or a mad dash up the hill.

I have tried the natural consequences route. I have explained it to her, repeatedly, that if she eats a bit faster or skips her television show, she can play with the puppy longer; or if she does not want to play with the puppy that is fine too, then she can have more TV. I have tried the not rushing thing and just show up late to school. Guess what, she does not care. She whines a bit about being late, which is annoying, but in the end she runs in, sees her friends and forgets all about it.

So I have now put my foot down. She will do what I say when I say it.

However, my problem is that I do not want her to grow up and just blindly follow orders (with the exception of mine, of course). I want her to question authority if she feels that something is wrong. I want her to be able to stand up and think for herself and to find her voice.

But my feeling is that she is still in single digits, and for now, mommy does know better in some things, so she really should listen and do what mommy tells her to, for now. However I told her that she can always ask me why I told her to do certain things after she does them. In fact, I encourage her to always ask me why, but after. And, I promised her that if she shows that she is listening better, she can start asking 'why' before she does the thing, and maybe we can negotiate about starting to negotiate again.

Unsolicited Advice...

Recently I learned that the only thing that will cause more people to give you advice than walking around with a baby/child, is walking around with a puppy.

Not that I do not appreciate the help, and sometimes the suggestions are actually quite useful; however, sometimes I just want to walk my dog; and thanks, but no thank you, I do not need you to teach him to sit/come/stay/down and even once swim....

Getting all this advice reminded me how easy it is to be influenced by other people, and how easy it is to start believing in certain things, like not vaccinating your children.

I admit, for one minute of my life I considered changing my child's vaccination schedule (I was never not going to vaccinate, I just considered waiting until she was bigger). I remembered this because some nice person told me all about when to neuter my puppy and to look up the information online.

Just like when my little one was small, I was once again completely sleep deprived, and when that happens, everything sounds slightly reasonable to me....

So I went home and looked up the studies regarding when to neuter my puppy. The science is actually a bit controversial. Yes there is some evidence that suggests you can reduce the chances of certain cancers, diseases, and problems if you neuter or spay later (if at all), however you increase the chances of other types of cancers, diseases and problems if you wait.

So I asked my vet about this during the pup's check up. I figured my vet spent years and probably lots of money going to vet school to learn about this sort of thing, while I spent maybe an hour on the internet... she would probably be a good person to ask. What she told me was it doesn't hurt to wait, but if my pup's behaviour changes, or other dogs are getting very aggressive with him, maybe it is time.

I know this had very little to do with the choice to vaccinate or not, but the situations were sort of similar. Back then, I was very much sleep deprived when I heard from somewhere about vaccines increasing the chances of autism. So I did what I usually do and looked on the internet (by the way, my uncle is a doctor and he repeatedly tells people to stop looking for medical advice on the internet, Dr. Google may convince you that you have ebola when you may just be suffering from seasonal allergies...).

Anyway, there they were on my screen, articles after articles on how vaccines were bad. Then being the suspicious person that I am I looked some more. For one thing I learned the biggest advocate for this movement (at that time) was Jenny McCarthy. Now... I am willing to take fashion and maybe beauty advice from celebrities, but I definitely draw the line at medical advice. So the more I looked - which really was probably me hitting page 2 on my google search - the more I learned about the methodology flaws, and other controversy over the paper where this whole vaccine-autism thing began. But the most important thing that I found was most international medical associations clearly state that vaccines do not cause autism (I said most because I never bothered looking them all up). So yes, my little one got vaccinated on schedule.

People mean well, but you know what they say about good intentions... I am sure the people who stop me and offer me suggestions on how to train my dog is only trying to help. And I have no doubt that people, including Jenny McCarthy who tell you not to vaccinate your children do not actually want your kids to get polio, diphtheria and other horrid diseases.

What I learned back when my little one was a baby, and was reminded about now, is that, it is important to listen to people, but a little scepticism is not a bad thing. And, always check where your information comes from. Google is great at finding information, but so far, not so great as to filtering truth from fiction... that I still need my sleepy brain to do.