Can I have Carrots?

Sometimes it’s hard to know when a child is old enough mentally to understand what’s happening to them.   Sure, they don’t have control of their lives, meaning they don’t get to eat candy every meal.   But do they understand the reason we want them to eat more healthful foods?  Are they able to connect feeling badly later because they ate too many marshmallows and gummy worms when you weren’t looking?

As parents we say, “No” an awful lot.   We sat, “not right now” almost as much.   And then there are the, “no, because you made a choice” answers.   Those are the best.   Let me give you an example from tonight:  my daughter didn’t want to eat her piece of pizza for dinner.   She decided taking all the cheese off the top would make it better, but she was wrong.    I told her she had to eat the piece of pizza AND the cheese she’d torn off the top because that’s not how we ate pizza.    If she did this, she would be eligible for dessert.

We don’t ever make our children finish meals because we don’t want them to be required to eat food when they’re full, building bad habits.   What does happen though is by not finishing their meal, there are consequences.   “If you choose to not finish your dinner, that’s fine, but there will be no more food at all tonight.”   This almost always is met with an, “okay” answer and commonly is followed up with complaining, whining and terrible suffering on the part of the child when they realize they’re hungry an hour later.  For some reason, telling them they can have as big a breakfast as they want in the morning rarely mollifies them.   But it does make for a good lesson.

Today my daughter didn’t want to finish the pizza, or the cheese she’d pulled off the top.   She said, “I don’t want dessert.  I don’t want the cookies I baked with Morgan this afternoon.  I’m not hungry.”   You know what happened next, right?  She was ravenous—for cookies—only cookies.   I told her her dinner was in the trash because she walked away from the table and told me she was full.   I explained how I was sad to throw away the pizza, but she said she didn’t want it.  

She cried.   She wailed.   She told me how her tummy was hungry, but only hungry for cookie.   My husband came into the room and told her if she was that hungry, she could have carrots.    That brought on another round of crying with her bemoaning, “I only like carrots if they’re in carrot cake.”  I looked around the corner to where Edna was vacuuming and told her this was one of the best parts of parenting in action.    She and I tried not to laugh out loud for the next twenty minutes while my daughter came up with reason after reason she needed food (not carrots but definitely cookies).

Then, suddenly, I think she finally got it.   My daughter changed her tone and said to me, “Mommy, I’m so sorry I didn’t eat my dinner.  Can I have carrots?”

The Big Boy Update:   Yesterday I mentioned how my husband and son went to launch his birthday rocket in a gravel field.   My son was thrilled for the entire three launches.   He figured out how the rocket was traveling downward with the parachute and ran across the gravel, catching it neatly when it returned to Earth.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and I were doing water painting yesterday.   We wanted to help the water dry faster and my daughter suggested we make a paper fan.   I told her I’d get a piece of paper for us to accordion fold into a fan.   She told me, “get an orange piece of paper.  All fans are suppose to be orange.”