Pants-free Parenting: Paying my kid off with princesses

Two hours after I showed my husband the positive pregnancy test, he made a budget. In that budget he accounted for the full cost of having a child - college savings, food, diapers, hospital bills, preschool and day care costs. But there was one cost we never anticipated: bribes.

My child is more efficient at collecting bribes than a Soviet bureaucrat. We bribe her to eat her food, to stay in bed, take a nap, stop kicking the walls and, for heaven's sake, stop pooping in her pants. But we don't pay in money or candy or the normal currency of toddlers. We pay her in princesses and princess-related paraphernalia. Right now, she's five potty poops away from a coveted princess umbrella.

My daughter's gift for graft comes honestly. My husband and I would rather rely on a system of redirection and rewards, rather than the more corporal discipline regimen executed by our parents. My parents still own a wooden spoon emblazoned with words from the Biblical Psalm: “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

But my husband and I? We are weak and spineless. Also, our kid knows how to call the cops. So, we innocently began to entice her to eat with the promise of dessert. Many parents do this. But for us, this was a slippery slope. Once we learned our daughter's currency - princesses - we began to exploit it. Pick up and get a princess sticker. Stop making me clean poop out of your princess underwear and get a princess. And while our child is a lot more well-behaved, the result is a toddler black market of bribery that is threatening to bankrupt us.

I knew the bribes had gotten out of hand when a week ago, as I lectured her not to turn her baby brother into a chicken with her magic wand (a process that inexplicably involves repeating head bashing), she responded, “Ok, I stop. But what I gonna get?” Then, she looked at me with her arms crossed.

What she got was a trip to the time out chair.

I'm beginning to worry that I'm creating a child who will expect a sticker every time she doesn't stab someone on the street.

So, in order to ease her off the bribes, I've made charts. Five poops equates to one princess item. And for everything else? Well, let's just say I'm writing the words, “He who spareth the time out chair spoileth the child” on a little stool.

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Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two, and hater of pants. You can email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her  writing on LyzLenz.com.