Of course, the things we choose to battle over will vary from mom to mom and child to child. But I think there are at least a couple things we can agree are worth fighting over—and a few that will only end in tears all ’round.

Worth fighting for

• Anything involving a real safety issue
• Serious property damage (Hayden’s entering a destructive/accident-prone stage!)
• Violence toward people or animals

Like banging your head on a brick wall
As Hayden becomes more and more fierce in his independence, I’ve realized there are some things that you shouldn’t or really, truly can’t make someone else do.

• You can’t make someone eat—at least, not safely. And bargaining (eat two more bites of vegetables or no dessert!) is supposed to reinforce the undesirability of the already-hated food item. Stupid psychology.
• You can’t make someone sleep—at least, not without drugs.
• You can’t make someone calm down—but I have picked up some great tricks here. My favorite is when Hayden is getting upset or whining and it’s the beginning of a downward spiral, I take a deep breath and blow it out in his face. Then I have him do it back to me. He almost always does this because he thinks it’s funny—but I just got him to take a breath.

Really, I guess, you can’t make people do anything, really, but as a parent we’re used to having some modicum of control (or being expected to have some modicum of control!).

These are just the first things I thought of—what have you found is worth fighting for? What’s not?