Bribery for Children

If you haven't raised a two year old in a while then you don't know what you are missing. It is all at once filled with fun and challenges. Life with Braden requires love, patience, wisdom, and many other traits. In fact caring for him requires an entire toolbox full of tools and techniques.

When raising a toddler there is no magic grouping of tools to solve all your problems. You can't fix everything with WD-40, duct tape, and vice grips like Walt Kowalski claims in Gran Torino. For Braden you need the entire Craftsman section of Sears.

One of my favorite tools is motivation. The proper motivation can turn any wild child into a perfect little angel. To many of us proper motivation as a child might have included the phrase "don't make me take off my belt!" Maybe your family had their own special version like "Don't make me hang you from the ceiling fan by your toes!"

Fear is always a good motivator, but what we initially found is that a more positive approach works better for Braden. You know the old you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar theory.

Arica is the absolute master of this technique. For some time we couldn't get Braden to eat anything. He would fight you to the death over a meal. He would even fight to get out of eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The only way to get him to eat was to offer him something of value. If you offered him a gummy for eating his meal then he would start chowing down. Proper Motivation.

We used gummies, cookies, stickers and other things to motivate the little man to eat. It was a breakthrough parenting moment for me. In my mind the official permission, even encouragement, to bribe my kid made so many goals seem a lot more achievable. All of a sudden parenting made a lot more sense.

Well as with anything in parenting as soon as you figure something out things change. Now Braden eats most of the time without any promise of reward, but there are still other areas where proper motivation is required. He might need motivation to quit running around the house so we can change his diaper. He might need motivation to pick up his toys or take his medicine. Motivation is necessary for kids of all ages and Braden is no different.

Unfortunately as his little rebellious streak grows and grows the sweet promise of candy is not always as enticing. It works sometimes, but it has to be balanced with the proper amount of discipline as well. Otherwise you just end up with a fit throwing kid with a mouth full of cavities.

So as times change so do our methods. The threat of a time out really does wonders for a kids behavior. I'll say it again. Proper Motivation.

No Mop Tops Please

It seems that there is typically so much dread about a babies first haircut.  Mom's don't want to part with the curls, or more appropriately the mop top.  Often times the babies don't want to part with the hair either.  After all what part of their developing mind is supposed to understand why a strange person with a sharp object is hovering around their head. 

At our house we were excited for the first haircut.  We think little boy haircuts are cute.  We tormented Arica's brother and his wife for months about getting their son's hair cut, and we are not hypocrites.  In our defense our nephew was regularly referred to as she by strangers.

Braden didn't have any problem with the hair cut either.  We should have known that he would like the barber sharp because of his social nature. After all it is the only place on earth where it is acceptable for men to gossip.  There is plenty of talk about sports. In my particularly barber shop, decorated with no less than 5 deer heads and one bear, hunting is a very popular topic of conversation as well.  So I look forward to many years of manly talk at the barber shop with my little buddy Braden.

Like Walt Kowalski does in "Gran Torino" I may even take him there one day to teach him how men talk.  I would be a little less vulgar than my hero Mr. Eastwood was in the movie though.

For now I will just be happy to have the memory and of course the pictures of Braden's first haircut.

Gran Torino and Clint Eastwood

I watched the movie Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood recently. I am a huge Eastwood fan and I loved the movie. Eastwood still has the same tough guy presence that made him famous. He delivers his curt one liners as as well as ever. It's a good movie and there are a lot of other things to praise, but this is not a movie review blog so I will let someone else handle that. I want to write about the tough guys we all loved and to wonder if any more will follow in the future.

For my money Clint Eastwood was the coolest, toughest leading man of all time. Before any John Wayne supporters attempt to bomb my house I want to throw some support his way as well. The Duke is great and I would never say anything bad about him. It just happens that I like Eastwood better. I think he is the tough guy of my generation or at least the generation closest to me while John Wayne is for the older generation. You can't lose with either one. They both carried all the pictures they were in with their presence. All guys wanted to be like them and all women wanted to be with them. Like I touched on in my Diaper Fear post, all boys want to grow up and be tough like these two heroes of the silver screen.


I hope Braden wants to grow up to be like me. I want to be his hero but it would be nice if there was an up and coming tough guy for him to enjoy at the movies. As long as AMC is around the Duke and Clint will never die, but the new generation needs their own heroes. So I wonder like George Jones once sang about the great country crooners, "Who's gonna fill their shoes?" I'm open to any suggestions because frankly I don't think it can be done. There will never be another John Wayne. There will never be another Clint Eastwood. Gone are the days when acting carried movies. When a strong male lead could guarantee a great movie. Today most movies filmed with guys in mind are special effects monsters. We are supposed to get more excited by motorcylces jumping into helicopters and other ridiculous stunts than by the actors. I hope a new hero emerges some day. The western genre that made John Wayne and Clint Eastwood famous is pretty much dead, but there are still a lot of cop movies to be made. There may not be another Dirty Harry but for Braden's sake I hope Hollywood can come up with somebody.