I love our children and the fact they will try anything once. With that we are grateful. We are slowly getting over the hurdles of bad habits which get brought over from the other homes. They know when they step into this house it's "our world" with "our rules" but at times we have bumps in the road...and sometimes these bumps turn into miniature hills.
The one thing we find the most challenging in this house is keeping track of who eats what, who won't eat what, who decides to like one thing and the next day won't like it even though two hours ago they were raving about how much they LOVED IT... because as you know, they are children and depending on which way the wind blows dictates their mood and what is going to happen that day.
In this house the options are: either you eat it or you eat it for your next meal. We aren't playing this game. Sounds mean, but bare with me here. (The exception to this rule is lunch because they either buy or I make them lunches they'll eat.)
My mom still humors my brother and I and caters to us and makes us meals according to what we like and what we don't and we are grown adults. We are spoiled, ain't gonna lie. Nor are you really gonna hear me complain. We love it. When I was home a couple of months ago, my mom said to me, "I wish I hadn't of done that with you two." You know what, I wish she hadn't of done that with us either. She never truly got to enjoy a meal because she was so busy cooking us all different thing. We also grew up not eating certain things because one person didn't like it. Example, my dad doesn't like broccoli. It wasn't until college I started eating broccoli and I freaking LOVE it. She also mentioned I was a lot stricter on the kids when it came to eating then most parents. This is true.
She had two of us. There are three of them. I am not catering to three kids. Either you eat it now or you eat it later, but either way, you're eating it and you're going to be grateful. You're other option is learning how to cook.
Now days, I sit and I watch how bratty children are. I see how rude or how ungrateful they are. At the end of meals my children say, thank you for making me eat that, I never would have realized how much I liked ____ if I didn't try it. Now that is what we call rewarding. It may have been a bit of a struggle, and it sucks having to battle it out with the little person, but I'm not going to raise a little snot either. We have enough of those running around.
This is because I don't want my kids to think they are going to get away with whining or crying to get out of everything. (And people wonder what's wrong with kids today... I wonder.) Not happening here. Our pickiest eater is Abi as well as our sloooooowwwessst eater. It's painful at times. Even the dog gives up waiting for food to be dropped because she gets tired of standing there. If she's done first and wants seconds, we know we are in for a growth spurt. Her and Freddie are in a growth spurt together right now and I am pretty sure by the end of today there will be no food in the house and I JUST went to the store two days ago... I'm taking donations for free food.
With Abi she would try to out last us at the table. Little did she know, I am the queen of stubborn. Ask my Dad. My Daddy is one patient man, but when it came to me and not wanting to eat, I'd just sleep at the table. If I didn't want to eat, I wasn't going to eat. So they gave up on forcing me to eat. Smart man or else I'd be 30 something and still sitting at my parent's dinning room table.
I had mentioned this issue to a coworker of mine because Scotty P and I just didn't know what to do. We had tried the putting her to bed early, the making her sit there until she broke down, the "fine we don't care" attitude, but it just didn't seem to be working if anything it seemed to get worse. As I was talking to this coworker he said to me, when I was younger my grandparents (who raised him) did this tactic on him once and never again did they have eating issues with him. His grandmother made food he didn't want to eat, so they said, "Okay, go to bed early since you're not going to participate in this family, and it will be there for you when you're ready for breakfast." He said to me, " I wasn't going to eat it for breakfast, I didn't want it for dinner, why would I eat it for breakfast!?" So breakfast came around and he didn't want to eat it and his grandfather put it back in the fridge and told him it would be there for lunch... by the time lunch came around he was so hungry he ate it. My coworker said, never again did I try to cop out of a meal.
I thought, brilliant. So that night I mentioned it to Scotty P, sure enough, Abi refused to eat dinner. Off to bed she went, to the fridge went her food and the next morning it was her breakfast. Eating issues have become a minimum (aside from being slow, but if that's the worse of it, I'll take it).
Lessons learned?
1. You can't outlast children even if you think you can. Stop fooling yourself.
2. There is always a way to beat them at their own game. It's just a matter of how.
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