PERFECTLY DISHEVELED: EMPTY THREATS

June 17, 2011

EMPTY THREATS

I really don't know when it happened. If I could just remember the day it all changed, why it all changed, and how it all changed, I think I'd unlock the key to parenting. When did my child start to need discipline? I mean, DIS.CI.PLINE. Like "do that again and you're grounded for life" discipline. He's only 3. Well, almost 4. And yet it seems like it was just yesterday that I was monitoring milestones and neurotically researching which solids were the best to introduce first. Bananas... peas... Berries, OY. The berries. Who cares that the AAP said you can introduce them as early as 6months. I just spent $300 for a "pediatric food specialist" in the Pacific Palisades who said it was too soon...

Now, I'm changing the tone of my voice, taking deep breaths, negotiating like there's a bomb strapped to my back... Everything has changed. My goal to discipline according to "the plan" is not, well, going as planned. Trust me, I start out as a discipline-like-an-evolved-democrat-voting-parent... but shit. One can only, get down to "their" eye level, talk in a calm but firm voice for so long while their child slams a computer shut or gets out of bed 45 times... The result of failing the "what good parents on the Westside of LA pay thousands of dollars to accomplish" is a big, heavy, and ridiculous dose of the ET's: Empty Threats.

So far, my threats are pretty standard... punishments that fit the crime. But just like the new hilarious book Go the F*** to Sleep by Adam Mansbach (you must listen to THIS audio version), there are a thousand things I'd like to threaten with but never will. Here are some of the ridiculous threats I could spew, and I think you all could do if that button kept getting pushed...

If you do that one more time....

I will throw out all your shoes.