I don’t know if bribing is good or bad in the Parenting 101 handbook, but I’ve been doing a lot of it lately and I gotta say – it works 
Three examples
#1. “If you don’t cry at drop off for a *month* I will buy you whatever you want!” – I blurted this out over dinner one night (one too many whiskeys), and my 4 year old’s eyes lit up like it was Xmas Eve… He’d been having trouble getting into preschool each morning (he LOVES it there but for some reason cries as soon as I’m about to leave him) and everything we’ve tried up to that point wasn’t working…
“I can get anyyyyyyything???” he says with a sly grin. “Yup, anything! Within reason!!” I start backpeddling, lol… “Okay, deal.”
And just like that it was on… Which a) surprised the crap out of me because it’s been such A THING lately and there’s no way this silly little trick was gonna work, right?, and b) I started to get nervous because all of a sudden I had promised him a big, probably expensive, prize, haha… But I knew he couldn’t ask for anything Too crazy ‘cuz his imagination isn’t as developed as his older brothers’, and a few minutes later I was put to ease when he came back with, “I want a giant squishmallow.”
[A giant squishmallow – adorable, cuddly, under…
