Every so often (read – Thursday or Friday EVERY SINGLE WEEK!!) when Chick is beyond tired she will have a completely unreasonable meltdown about something. It’s normally a relatively trivial thing that triggers it but once she starts all hell breaks loose.
Now, once upon a time I used to scream and shout back and send her to her room but the older she gets the more I try to behave reasonably in the hope that she will copy me and that I haven’t given her a temper for life by not being calmer when she was younger.
We do have rules in our house and my Mum thinks that I'm way too strict with Chick. I guess that’s a Nana’s prerogative and after almost eight years we’ve agreed to disagree although obviously I’m always right ;-) One of my rules is that you don’t have to eat everything on your plate but if you don’t then there will be nothing else to eat. No dessert, no supper and definitely no random snack of yoghurt or fruit.
Tonight, Chick specifically requested Lasagne and being the lovely, caring Mother that I am, I actually made one for her. She took one bite, declared it disgusting and made me remove it from her sight before she was sick!!! I reminded her of the rule, whilst biting my tongue and not saying anything about wasting my valuable time cooking it and she was all ok and not remotely hungry.
Fast forward thirty minutes to me being on the phone with my best friend and immediately she starts being unreasonable (No......I don’t know where she gets it from either!!) Chick was banished to the naughty step for being rude and the wailing started:
Her: You don’t love me
Her: Mum, talk to me
Her: Life is soooooooooooooooo unfair, I’m starving!
Her: I hate you
Me: I’ll be there in a minute and when you’ve calmed down we’ll discuss your behaviour.
Her: I’m sooooooooooo hungry, you don’t love me, you are STARVING me, I hate you.
I finished my phone call and tried and talk to her about her behaviour, which basically resulted in her being sent to bed early and crying for an hour whilst intermittently moaning about being hungry and me breaking out a very, VERY, large vodka and red bull!
What do you do with your kids? Do you have similar rules or would you have given in and let her have something else to eat? Do you make your kids eat everything on their plate? Am I being incredibly harsh? I look forward to reading your views and am praying that I’m not the only ‘strict’ Parent out there!!!
