Elaborating on Taoist mothering

I started thinking yesterday about extending this Taoism / motherhood perspective and I thought I should make it clear that in no way am I advocating a philosophy of simply letting children run wild.

I see the results of that in the juveniles that I see when I visit criminal court.

No, my PreciousBoy has some very firm limits and he knows what he can and can't do and he gets timeouts for misbehaving.

But I have found that sometimes I need to move at his pace, or sometimes do the things that he wants to do first, otherwise he rebels. Hence, the wisdom of applying some Taoism.

For example: This morning, he woke up late and since we needed to rush to get him to his preschool on time, I tried to get him to change his clothes. I got a blood-curdling "No!" and backed off, seeing a temper tantrum in the works. So I lured him to the kitchen and fed him breakfast first. His tummy full of pancake, it was very easy for me to get him to change his clothes.

Now, I could have been insistent and changed his clothes and dealt with his temper tantrum, but instead I went with the flow and got everything accomplished that needed to get accomplished with a minimum of fuss. And it turned into a happy morning