I have a parenting tip that I think should get me at least five minutes on Oprah!  There's a lot I don't know about parenting, even after raising a number of children.  This works, though, and beats arguing hands down.

Our youngest daughter was born to shop.  My mistake.  Due to the extreme heat in Austin's summers, I took our one-month-old  in her stroller through Barton Creek Mall.  We didn't necessarily buy anything; we just browsed.  What I have learned is this:  if you take a baby girl to the mall, it will imprint on her.  She will begin to dream of Juicy Couture handbags in fifteen colors or Jimmy Choo Stiletto heels before she is old enough to eat table food.  Take your infant to a public library or Barnes and Noble, but don't take her to the mall.  If it is too late for you, as it is for me, then apply this remedy generously.

One afternoon, we were in Charlotte Russe and our teenage daughter was especially spellbound by shopping opportunities.  Despite the fact that it was homework and dinner time,  I COULD NOT get her out of the store.   The gansta rap music that vibrated in the background was getting on my nerves in a big way and I felt like the prisoner of a bad dream.  Then I had a vision.  I told my teenager that I felt something strange sweeping over me.  I started to gyrate and bop and boogie and to do that rap dance called, Raising the Roof.  Oh, it pays to be a bad dancer. 

"What are you doing, M-o-t-h-e-r?" she asked nervously, throwing the aqua satin blouse back on the rack. 

"Just dancing," I replied, now drawing a small crowd.

"You're embarrassing me!  Let's go!"

"No, honey .  I'm having such a good time."

"I've got to do my homework."  Now, she was sweating bullets.  "And I've got to study for the TAKS test."

"Well, maybe you're right, " I said.  "But, let me finish this dance first."

We were out of the store in under sixty seconds.  This technique continued to work every time I uttered the magical phrase, "I feel it coming on and I just can't help myself."