Death by a thousand conversations

I'm someone who believes that in general, you shouldn't ask kids to do something unless you have a good reason. And that you should be willing to explain your reasons to them, for their sake but also for your own sake. I'm an Alfie Kohn devotee, and I believe from my own experience (and Kohn's books) that external motivations, i.e. threats and bribes, don't work well in the long term. So, I explain, and I explain, and I explain.

And because we're unschooling, whenever Anya has a question, I explain... and explain further. She's a chatterbug, and I'm sure that this is helpful long-term, because she learns a lot from our conversations.

But I get bone-weary from all this discussion. How do tornadoes happen? Why can't you make a cake out of only sugar and eggs and milk and no flour? What do spies do? What's a war? Oh, and could you make sure your answer is understandable to 6-year-olds, avoid anything scary, and condense your response to no more than 5 sentences?

After a while my brain goes numb.

Having given you that context, I had what you might call a 'parenting failure' today-- hardly a rare event, I admit. It happened like this:

Me: Anya, you've been out of the bath for a half hour, will you get dressed, please?

Anya: Why should I?

Me: Because we don't want your butt showing all day.

Anya: I think I have a cute butt.

Me: You do have a cute butt, but I don't want to look at it all day.

Anya: So don't look.

Me: Listen, will you just put on underwear, at least? As a favor to me?

Anya: Will you just do me a favor and stop asking me to put on underwear?

Me: Someone might come to the door, you need to at least have underwear on.

Anya: Okay, if someone comes to the door, I'll run upstairs and put underwear on.

Me: Look, it's not normal to go around naked all day, all right?

Anya: Well, it's normal for me!

Me: You need to wear some clothes. People wear clothes for a reason.

Anya: Like what reason?

Me, losing it: I AM YOUR MOTHER AND YOU WILL DO WHAT I SAY! GO AND PUT ON UNDERWEAR!

Oy vey.