Let's Make A Deal come over to the dark side, we have cookies!

If you have a viable dragon egg in your purse (back pocket for guys)............ you must be an Autism parent!  Ever have nightmares about Bob Barker (now Drew Carey)?  Does your heart stop the second you hear, "Let's Make a....."? It doesn't matter if the rest of that sentence is cake, reservation, dress, or voodoo doll, we always seem to go immediately to the dreaded DEAL!! Kids with Autism are genetically programmed with the "Let's Make a Deal" gene.

When they are little, thankfully it doesn't take much to seal the deal.  "OHHHHH, if you sit quietly in the shopping cart prison while mommy shops for the one food you will eat, you can hold my  (sigh) expired, useless gym card!  DEAL??" (you always need to preface each deal with the exaggerated parental, "OHHHHH" so they know how "special" the deal is) As they get older the deals naturally get bigger.  The trick is not to dig yourself into a hole that you don't want to be in with an out of control child!

If you sit at the table for 1 minute during supper, then you can have chocolate pudding for dessert.  DEAL?? (Please sit at the table for 1 minute because without your nightly chocolate pudding the rest of the night will be HELL!!) 

If you pee in the potty (or at least the potted plant, potty and potted at least have the same root!) instead of  in the dog bowl (thanks Bacon and Juice Boxes for that gem!) then you can have 15 extra minutes of watching the 16 second commercial that you like to watch over and over! DEAL?? (Please pee in the potty because I need to see the Mayhem guy pretend to be a toddler 60 more times to make my day complete! (to be completely honest ~ this one is my absolute favorite!!  you either will laugh or cry)

If you get to school on the bus without opening the back emergency door and jumping out (yes, my son actually did this more than once!  He was a Houdini with 5 point harness bus seat belt) then you can have a day free of an emergency room visit!  DEAL?? (please stay in your seat, the emergency room is going to start charging me rent)

And so it continues, day in and day out. The daily task of "I'll see your extra bag of chips in my lunch and raise you a new freakishly expensive power ranger toy that comes with 99 tiny parts~ that will immediately be scattered to all corners of the house~ that will end up inside the cat~ that be thrown up by said cat~ that you will slip on~ that will make you fall~ that will mean that you can't fix some "nasty" thing for supper that you know I won't eat so you will order my favorite take out! It is a win-win (well for me)  DEAL??"  

So the next time you are faced with the need to "Let's Make a Deal" to get your child to... well do just about anything, and you see their chubby little hand outstretched to seal the deal............. RUN for the nearest exit and don't look back  They likely would have done it eventually without the Porsche anyway!