What the Brady Bunch taught me about parenting

It occurred to me the other day that a great portion of my creative parenting skills, if they can be so-called, came from watching "The Brady Bunch."

If you're not familiar with "The Brady Bunch," go ask your mother.

The thing I loved about this show is that Mike and Carol were perpetually calm, cool and creative. Though everyone has their favorite episode, a particular one for me is a lesson in creative parenting.

Greg, the eldest child, took the family car after being told not to drive. This came as a result of some infraction, which I don't remember, but Carol and Mike specifically told he was grounded from driving their car. So he drove someone else's.

After being found out, Greg feigned innocence by stating his parents' exact words were not to drive "their car." Instead of getting angry, the Perpetually Cool Brady Parents chose to be creative and take Greg at his exact words for the next while. This resulted in him mowing the lawn at midnight and the like. It also meant a quick end to the exact-words duel.

What hits me here is that, despite the source being a cheesy sitcom, this was a really great solution.

My husband and I hit upon a great solution with one of our own Brady Bunch (which consists of three boys and three girls, too).

Here's what happened. One of my young sons has problems focusing.

When life gets overwhelming, he retreats to his joyful imaginary world and simply reads. He would rather read than pretty much anything else, including breathe.

Despite our creative attempts to help him stay put and focus on homework or other tasks, he would leave the kitchen table in search of … books.

Enter the duct tape.

My husband jokingly made the suggestion, "Heeey, what if …"

We strapped a few strands of duct tape over our son's legs and the chair, just enough to remind him to sit tight, but not tight enough to really keep him there should he not wish to.

Interestingly, he thought it was a riot and wanted me to take a picture. It was about that time I began to have serious doubts about our success.

However, he stayed put and got his homework done in record time. Afterward, we had a chat about recognizing how often he would have gotten up.

The other night, he had one more homework assignment, and he was done, finito, no problemo.