Want to make life as a mom a little easier? Just say 'yes'

The words I utter over the course of the day more than any others are: no, stop, get down, get off of that, get out of there, stop, no, that's not safe, stop, I said stop, I told you no, and no.

In fact, some days, it seems that all I do is find new ways to say "no" over and over again. "No" -- it is my rallying cry, my call to battle.

I am the mother of two very busy boys -- boys who consistently amaze me with their ability to find unique ways to hurt themselves in their exceedingly child-proofed environment. They're not drinking drain cleaner, but Peter does hurtle himself from one piece of furniture to another. And I can't begin to tell you how loudly I said "no" when I found Mike shooting down our very steep hill, crammed into the bed of a Tonka dump truck.

Most of the time, I tell my children "no" to protect them from themselves and their complete lack of sense. But I also often say "no" completely out of habit.

For instance, when we visited the library the other day, Peter wanted to check out every Curious George book on the shelf. Every single one? Was he kidding? How much reading about an unsupervised monkey can a person take? No way. Mike often wants to make his own lunch. But he just turned five! Make his own lunch? He'd probably stab himself in the eye with a butter knife! Forget it.

When a friend of mine, who just happens to be a child development expert, was visiting, I mentioned how there are days that all I do is say "no." She listened intently and then made what might just be the most preposterous suggestion I have ever heard: "Why don't you try saying 'yes' more often?"

I wanted to take her by the shoulders and say, "Are you completely INSANE, woman? Say 'YES'???! Why don't I just hand them some matches and kerosene and leave them alone for the day?"

But she continued, "If their health or safety are not in jeopardy, what's the harm in saying 'yes'?"

I could think of the harm in saying "yes," like complete mutiny. But I thought my friend, who has actually gone to school for this kind of thing, might know more than me, since I am generally learning about children in a trial-by-fire manner. So I decided to give saying "yes" a one-week trial.

The results: Peter wore the same sweatshirt that was too small for him nearly every single day -- in public. Mike ate a lot of mangled-looking PB&Js with enough jelly on each one to give him his fill of sugar for the week. We managed to avoid the Curious George collection at the library, but not the truck book collection. And we ate lunch an hour late one day because they were having too much fun sledding to stop.

All in all, not exactly mutiny. I still spent a lot of my day saying "no" since it has been proven that 99.99 percent of 2- and 5-year-olds are not exactly superstars in the logic department. When Peter hopped on the cat, holding the cat's ears as if they were reins and shouted "Yee-haw," I had to step in and say "No!" When Mike began ruminating about tying his new bike to his sled to test if he could go fast enough down our hill to blast into space, he heard a resounding "No!"

But, and I really hate to admit this, saying "yes" worked. Nobody lost an eye and my kids did not take over my house and lock me in the basement. And, best of all, life was a little easier. There was significantly less whining and complaining, which resulted in significantly less stress for me. Could it be? Could saying "yes" instead of "no" make parenting easier?

Parenting is a funny job. Your objective is to shepherd your kids through their childhood so that as adults they can manage life without you. A big part of fulfilling that objective is learning when they ought to say "no." Whether it's no to drugs, drunk driving, a bad date, an unfulfilling career, a loveless marriage -- learning to say "no" at the right time is an important part of making good decisions.

Failure is part of learning. Trying is part of learning. And if kids aren't given the chance to try and fail, how do they learn?

As for me, I'm still learning too. Trying, failing, and learning -- that saying "yes" is sometimes much more effective than saying "no."