Consider Yourself Warned - W - Walking

It's time to go out of alphabetical order, I think.

Here's something you need to know about walking: it is a much longer process with children involved.

To get the obvious out of the way, kids are slow at the best of times, due to their unfortunate height deficiency. When we were looking for housing, I took the kids with me to places we were seriously considering, just so I could time them and see how long a walk it would be to school, the bus stop, etc (I highly recommend this).

But there are two other issues, too.

One is routine. Once you walk one way with a toddler, that's The Way To Walk. God forbid you should ever try to take a shortcut, or to not stop to marvel at the same tree ("Look Mommy! Big tree!") and yell at the same cats ("Fooya cats!! Fooya!") every single day (the bonus - it makes life feel so much longer that it's like getting extra years).

This is rather inconvenient when you're in a hurry. So OK, you may need to risk upsetting your toddler (something that no parent of toddlers would take lightly), but if you need to go faster, you may have to tell them to leave the cats alone for a single day.

Which leads us to the second issue - walking strikes.

Unfortunately, the minute your toddler senses that you are attempting to hurry them along, or are not expressing sufficient admiration for the Big Tree, they go into strike mode. This is where what was, until two seconds ago, a fully functioning if rather small human body becomes an immovable lump of angry two-year-old.

At this point, you have a few options:

1. Stern voice. This is usually the first stop. "You need to keep walking RIGHT NOW!"

The benefits: it lovingly but firmly shows the child who is in charge.

The downside: it never works.

2. Walking away. Pretend you'll just go home without them. Fantasize about actually just going home without them.

The benefits: sometimes effective.

The downside: best case scenario, your child gets hysterical, you look like a terrible neglectful parent, and passing grandmothers stop to glare at you.

3. Picking them up.

The benefit: always effective.

The downside: dangerous. Toddler will continue to squirm with no thought of what's going to happen if he or she succeeds in breaking loose. You, if you are built anything like me, are likely to realize that you did have muscles in your arm after all - and that you just pulled them.

4. Threats.

The benefit: there is none. Toddlers are masters of psychological warfare. Don't try to beat them at their own game.

5. Bribes.

The benefit: this is really the go-to answer. My favorite bribe of late is offering to let Dani unlock the door if she agrees to walk up the stairs.

The downside: not always effective. Even if effective once, bribes tend to lose their effectiveness within a month. Also, it's probably bad parenting and teaching your children to throw tantrums, or something. But mostly just the not always effective part.