If I were you, MIC, I wouldn’t base your long-term parenting style on your ability to bribe a two-year-old. “Terrible Twos” is one of the classic misnomers of all time; anyone with older children knows that the excrement doesn’t really hit the oscillator until your kid turns three and starts testing boundaries in earnest. If you play the old “carrot-and-stick” game without the stick (not a real stick, mind you), all TIC will learn is how to play you like a Stradivarius.
The road to proper spanking is paved with many eminently sensible “don’ts.” Don’t spank unless you’ve exhausted all other options. Don’t spank to alleviate your own anger. Don’t ever close your hand or use an implement. Don’t spank to humiliate or coerce. Don’t spank a child who is too young to know why it’s happening. And don’t think spanking will work, because every kid will respond differently. All of these are very important caveats that demand a parent’s utmost attention before he or she decides, soberly and regretfully, that spanking is an appropriate course of action.
Where does that leave me? With just enough hubris to believe that, when extraordinary circumstances dictate, I can deliver the perfect, benign-yet-purposeful blow that will both earn my son’s undying respect and save him from the self-destructive behavior that could send him careening toward a degrading adult existence as a telemarketer. Or a fluffer. Or Scott McClellan.