Lately it seems that our sweet little angelic daughter is starting to look to the dark side for inspiration.  Rare are the days of snuggling on the sofa while we enjoy the timeless stylings of Dora The Explorer.  These sweet moments have only come to be replaced by endless battles over what we think M should wear to school versus what she thinks she needs to wear.  Pour thing obviously got her fashion sense from her dad.

We still battle at the dinner table each night trying to get Mrs. Thang to eat something besides tater tots.  Although, we have experienced a little progress with her palate as she has expanded into the realm of beef in the form of hamburgers and most recently, tacos.  Of course, the hamburger must be dry and may ONLY have one slice of american cheese.  The taco must be just ground beef with no taco seasoning and ONLY one slice of american cheese.  I realize that we did this to M somehow, but we sure as hell cannot figure out how to un-do the damage.  Hopefully, by the time M is dating (Age 30 if I have a say) her palate will have blossomed so that she might be able to enjoy mac-n-cheese, or a nice hotdog, or slice of pizza.  At least she will be a cheap date, right?

To go along with the wardrobe and diet battles, Mrs. Thang has taken a liking to talking back to us and she has the uncanny ability to tune us out when we are telling her to do something that she obviously does not think she needs to do.  Of course, this has resulted in M becoming very familiar with the timeout area in our dining room.  I recently walked by the timeout area and caught a glimpse of some markings on the wall.  Awww, my baby’s first graffiti.  This timeout area is starting to look like a well-used prison cell.  There are hash marks that track the minutes spent in timeout prison, there are crude drawings of the things from the outside that M does not get to experience while on the inside, such as the park and TV.  I almost lulled myself into thinking that maybe we have been to hard on our little princess…until the last couple of weeks at school.

Mrs. Thang has now taken her undisciplined show on the road.  Apparently she has been sent to timeout at school on at least three occasions that we know about. (in the past week and a half!)  I am fairly certain that there are more times that were conveniently left out of the daily “what did you do at school today” report.  As a result of Mrs. Thang’s willingness to take her bad behavior out into public, we are quickly coming to the realization that timeouts are just not cutting it.  We need to step up the consequences for crossing over to the dark side.  How do you do this, you ask.  I imagine each child is different, but what works for M, is to take away things most dear to her, such as Barbie.  (On a sad side note, some of you may recall Stripper Barbie (https://genericdad.com/2010/02/07/is-barbie-a-stripper/).  Well, she recently met her untimely demise due to a severe hip problem which prevented her from being able to close her legs…ironic, to say the least…a moment of silence please.)

With Stripper Barbie out of the picture, M now has a new favorite Barbie that has similar hooker boots and skanky skirt, PLUS she lights up when you depress her necklace.  This is M’s crack right now, and this is what I took from her when she got in trouble (again) at school yesterday.  For a brief couple of hours I had my princess back.  She snuggled with me while we watched Glee (her favorite show next to Idol) and she was on her best behavior!  We have also taken TV and bedtime story privileges and these seem to work, but only for the short-term.  Before we know it, she’s in trouble again at school and I am running out of things to take and I can’t bring myself to spank her.  Where does this leave us for discipline options?  Perhaps this should have been a Dear Abby letter…