My Kaycie Lou is quite the character, full of personality, stubborn, opinionated, hot headed, and absolutely hilarious. She does nothing half-way and is not afraid to let you know how she really feels about a situation. Dinner has always been drama for Little Red. If it is not eggs, fruit, or milk, she does not want it and refuses to eat it. And because I am not much of a cook, much less a short order one, she is offered the same things we are having. I try to have some compassion and fix something she will like but probably 4 out of 7 nights she goes to bed with little to no dinner. As you can see, she is not starving.
We have tried everything, bribery, force feeding, tears (on my part and hers), counting, airplanes, disguising food, trickery, you name it, I've done it. Not proud of some of our lower moments but most parents are experts on feelings of desperation just not so much experts on dealing properly with that desperation which is where our latest encounter comes in.
Our house at the beach had a nice array of stray cats that came along with it. There were probably 8-10 of them skirting around between the houses and my mom would make sure that their food and water bowls were full twice a day. They would not come near us but occasionally would run by or stop for a peek in the window.
One afternoon the big kids and I went with my dad on the boat which left Kaycie and her dad, along with my sister's family, brother's family, and my mom at the house. While having dinner Kaycie again chose this moment to have a battle of wills with her father over her dinner. This was not helped by the fact that my niece, Paisley is also a temperamental eater and that she and Kaycie were as thick as thieves for the week. In one of those moments of desperation my hubby says to all the kids, "You had better eat or I'm going to let the cats come in and they are going to get your food." Kaycie, eyes opened wide, frozen with her hands by her side, shouted, "SOMEBODY FEED ME!!!!"
Now you may be thinking, "That is just mean! You have scarred that child for life! Yada, yada, yada..." But hear this, since we have returned from the beach she has successfully managed to eat three dinners with the rest of the family. All of those dinners have included vegetables! Those vegetables have not been easy for her and they do come with lots of sputtering, gagging, and crinkled noses but she has gotten them down, which is something to be said. And when she has started to balk, my hubby will knock on the bottom of the kitchen table and give a low, "Meeeeeoooooooowwwwww." It works every time. She's getting some veggies in her and I've stopped feeling like I will lose my mind at dinnertime. And since I am going to get to keep my mind, I'm even willing to pay for her therapy over losing hers because of the desperate measures of her mom and dad. "Meeeeoooowwww."
That is way too funny!!! Who knew all it took was a cat to get the kid to eat veggies =)
ReplyDelete~Janelle