Parents share deals they’ve cut with their preschoolers and we understand
When a dad on Reddit revealed his preschooler’s upsetting deal-cutting skills, other parents cheered in solidarity and shared their own tales of bargain torment.
We are shook
“I used to do the deal thing too,” user boxidea posted ominously. “Then one day my four-year-old pulls this out: ‘Well daddy, I took your deal and I changed it. I will not clean up the markers and still get a cookie. That’s the new deal.’ OK, Darth Vader.”
Working the system
One parent said you have to be really careful when offering deals or bribes – because kids are whip-smart and will quickly learn how to make shivs, hide mobile phones in loose vents and generally work the system.
“I bribed my toddler with ‘candy’ (fruit snacks) to take her antibiotics,” Reddit user oh_ya_you_betcha posted. “For dayyyyyys after she was done with the meds, she’d come up to me and say ‘mecine?’ I asked her if she had an owie and she says ‘no, candy’. “
Another commenter noted that small children not only work the system, they become the system if you let them.
“I used to always say, ‘I’ll make you a deal’ to my son,” PotatoKingMom warned, “and then go on to say if you do this, you can have this. Then my son started saying that to me when I would ask him do something. ‘Buddy please clean up your room.’ ‘Okay, mama, I’ll make you a deal…’ I had to clear up who is the dealmaker real quick. And I also stopped doing that.”
“Don’t judge me!”
One parent was not here for your judgement – and another took deals to a sort of side-show next level:
“I’m potty training my kid with Hershey kisses. DONT JUDGE ME, he’s my fourth and he’s three and I’m done with fuc*ing diapers already,” RawketLeeg wrote.
“By the time we got to the last one,” twinkie45 concurred, “we taped a bunch of random candy and dollar store toys to the bathroom wall. If he pooped in the potty he could choose his prize. My prize was never buying or changing another diaper and I was more than willing to bribe my way across the finish line.”
As a parent who toilet-trained two children with spoons full of ice-cream as a reward, I support this sort of deal-making wholeheartedly.
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