Any toddler parent is familiar with the cajoling, wheedling, and imploring that go into an average day. All you want to do is get out the door for preschool and all the toddler wants to do is play with firetrucks, throw himself to the ground, or choose the seven important items that *must* come to the car with him. For a long time I had success with the closed-ended question: "Do you want to walk to the car or shall I carry you?" "Do you want to eat the peanut butter sandwich I made you at your behest or would you prefer to starve slowly?" "Do you want to brush your teeth or would you like them all to turn green like a pirate's?"
But then Connery started giving the "wrong" answers to the choices (clever little man), so I knew I would have to come up with something else. As an experiment the other day, I tried something new. We were doing the dental hygiene shuffle, whereby I try to convince him that he must enter the bathroom and allow me to place the toothbrush on his teeth in a brushing manner. The whole process, including dawdling time, can take up to 10 minutes. This day I said to him, "OK, Connery. If you don't want to brush your teeth, I'll just use your toothbrush on Sotek's teeth." Sotek is our cat, and she would no more allow us to brush her teeth than she would jump in the bath, but Connery doesn't know that yet. Protesting vociferously at the thought of his Curious George toothbrush on Sotek's Indoor Formula Chicken Meal-y teeth, he raced to the bathroom and stood still for the brushing.
I have had similar success with threatening to dress the cat in his pajamas, give the cat his dinner, and, yes, putting the cat in his bath. I told Chip that we could only do this because Connery is an only child and because the cat is the cat. If we tried this with a sibling it could lead to lasting therapy for both of them. Who knows, maybe it still will. For now, it's getting us out of the house in a somewhat expedited fashion, so I'm calling it OK.
What are your best toddler motivation techniques?