It costs me $8 to $12 dollars a week to get my 4-year-old son to listen to me.

No, I don't have an 800-infomercial number to pass along to you.

This is my own discipline routine called "If you're a good listener we'll go to the Thomas store on Saturday."

I'm not proud, but the promise of an $8-$12 train each week gets him to toe the line on just about everything.

"Jack, if you want to go the Thomas Store Saturday, do not wipe your dirty jelly-donut-hands on your sister."

This gets him to the sink pretty quickly.

Prior to this, we used the Great Santa Threat.

This is what you would hear me saying about three months ago.

"If you don't pick those up RIGHT now, I'm calling Santa and telling him to take back your Thomas Train."

In this instance, Jack was slumped on the floor, facing what seemed to be the most difficult charge of his lifetime cleaning up the half-full bag of corn chips he just dumped on the kitchen floor for no apparent reason.

I had tried modeling good behavior, reinforcing, and asking him to 'Turn on his listening ears!' But that didn't always work.

The Santa Threat was the I mean business threat.

But the corn chip mess was a high noon showdown.

Something about this face-off told me if I lost this one, I would lose all parental control.

And then twenty years later, despite four angry e-mails from his boss, he'd leave work without finishing his monthly statements, get fired, and be back at my house, lying on the couch watching Bob the Builder reruns, dumping corn chips on the floor.

So, after a half second spent contemplating the awful Santa Scenario just laid out for him, he swept up the crunchy mess real fast.

The Great Santa Threat was our most relied upon mode of discipline after "I'll tell Santa not to come" became null and void December 25th.

In his defense, Jack's not used to having to actually follow our directions.

He's been commandeering the house since he was diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder at the age of two-and-a-half when he only spoke 10 words.

A child psychologist told us that among other problems, Jack only had the receptive language of a 10 month old, at 30 months of age.

My husband Pat and I never knew if he was ignoring us, or just didn't understand what we were telling him.

So, we gladly followed along when he'd pull us around by the finger, and then gushingly give him whatever he led us to.

We were thrilled he was communicating with us in any way.

But it turns out Jack is quite smart.

I think he knew exactly what we were saying and was clever enough to know he had a good thing going!

He does have issues, but Jack's outcome will reveal itself as time unfolds.

However, he isn't as severely affected as we feared.

He still has trouble looking you in the eye when he talks to you and with approaching kids to play, but after almost two years of intensive work with 12 different teachers and therapists (in and out of our house 5 days a week!) his language skills are age appropriate.

His teachers call it astonishing.

We try not to think of any other possible scenario.

When you clear away the confetti of happiness that has fallen on our home though, you will find at the end of his long leash, a mini-emperor who is not willing to clean up corn chips on the first request.

And a toddler tyrant who is certainly not willing to give up his rule of the house, especially not to his little sister Riley.

But she won't be deterred in her quest to be heard.

She's learned (in response to the only times her parents take her demands seriously) that the best way for a one-and-a-half-year-old to get her way is to contort one's voice into a glass shattering scream. (And be sure to use it for varying degrees of importance, for example 'I dropped pink stuffed kitty #9 and really don't want to pick it up myself' or 'Hey, I just burned myself on the hot cookie tray that I couldn't reach yesterday, but remarkably can today!') When you're the second child born in a family with special needs you really get overlooked.

I certainly haven't filled out her baby book, and don't know exactly where it is.