The idea that life is hard and I should prepare my child for that disturbs me. Adopting that philosophy would be like telling her, “The world will treat you poorly; let me be the first.”

I prefer peaceful parenting. Which sounds self-righteous, and today — nearly ridiculous. Today I used force to keep my daughter from deliberately stepping into the street, from grabbing every breakable object in a store, and from opening a bathroom stall door while I was still seated. Which seems reasonable. Except that we both became more enraged with every intervention.

Today was not a peaceful day.

I treated her with force, and she reacted with anger. Well, duh. I don’t want to be forced to do things either.

Those weren’t surprising situations. Each one of them has occurred before, enough — I kept thinking — for her to know better. But why did I expect that doing the same thing in the same situation would get a different reaction? Why should she be the one to behave differently?

Instead of yanking her around after the fact, I could have prevented each of those situations by addressing them in advance in a gentle way. It could have been a fun day at the farmers’ market, and the furniture showroom, and the restaurant. We could have played.

That’s what I strive for — days that are delightful.

Scott Noelle wrote in a recent “Daily Groove” email that rejecting “authoritarian, coercive parenting in favor of non-punitive, pleasure-oriented parenting” will attract criticism from folks who believe that kids need to be prepared for a cold, cruel world.

He suggests that we should think of the frog, which will jump out if placed in boiling water, but will stay in the pot if it starts in cool water that’s brought to boiling. “The slow boil seems more humane, but that ‘well-adjusted’ frog eventually *died* from the heat! Whereas the non-adjusted frog’s intact sensitivity protected it from being boiled.”

I don’t want to prepare my girl to endure a difficult life, I want to prepare her to make a joyful one.