Discipline, maintenance, and survival

What I love about Gillian as a toddler: she talks more and more each day. 75% of what she says I'm still struggling to understand, and surely she is doing a lot of "practice" talking. But our communication capacities evolve and expand each day. And it's endearing and exciting.

I also love her messy bed head. Her silliness. The way she takes on the roles of others in the house, just trying them out. When I try to ignore her in bed and close my eyes to go back to sleep, she crawls up to me slowly, strokes my arms and neck, and softly goes "shhhhhhhh".

She plays the tattler, the victim, the pet manager, the daddy, the mommy, and the toddler - jumping from role to role with ease and delight.

Plus she smells so good.

But she needs constant maintenance in order to survive. She is always three steps away from killing herself; from falling out of tall chairs, from drinking dish detergent, from pulling sewing equipment down on top of herself.

And she is testing the waters and pushing the boundaries all day long. And it's so exhausting.

I read a lot of parenting blogs, and they all have advice: calm and gentle but firm words, logical consequences, a "yes touch" drawer to match every "no touch" one you establish.

But most times I find myself so rushed and so frustrated that I can't remember or execute any of them. (An argument for slowing down, which I'm exploring).

Lately, I've developed my own set of coping mechanisms. And although they work GREAT I think I'm setting myself up for major problems down the road.

Coping mechanism 1- PBS
      Gillian screams like a maniac and won't let me change her poopy diapers or get her dressed in the morning. My solution? I turn on PBS and she freezes for 10 minutes.

Coping mechanism 2 - Chocolate
     Gillian refuses to sit in her stroller, and we usually don't have time to let her walk to school with the girls in the morning. My solution? Chocolate chips. In fact, I spent a few weeks last month with a constant supply in my purse. In danger of a melt down when I put her in stroller/car seat/grocery cart? I would whip out a chocolate chip and voila! Silent and obedient.

Coping mechanism 3 - Boobs
     Despite my very best intentions, Gillian still nurses semi regularly. Now, it's usually first thing in the morning, maybe around naptime if I'm home, and then again at bedtime. But when we are out in public and she is sleepy and threatening a nuclear explosion and asking me for milk, I give in.
     When we are camping with non-parent human beings and she is in danger of crying ALL NIGHT LONG, I nurse her. ALL NIGHT LONG.

Potential consequences of my coping mechanisms?

An intellectually dull, uncreative, overweight grade schooler who is shunned by her classmates because she still nurses at age 7.