Oh, give me strength!
My thin and hungry child is crying for more food.
But she has a full plate and bowl in front of her. I already caved and added a little bit of cinnamon and sugar to her plain applesauce. And I made a second kind of sandwich in case she would prefer PB&J to ham and cheese. But I will not cave and give her something else for lunch! I will not!
But it's so hard. She could use the food, surely. But if I just make her something I know she'll eat, she'll learn that all she has to do is cry and she'll get whatever she wants. And down the line I'll really regret it . . .
Seeing it written out makes me feel better. I am making the right decision here. (I hope.) And if she gets hungry enough, she'll eat the sandwich(es) and applesauce. Right? I mean, I don't want a kid like my cousin who went through a period of only eating white rice. I'm the boss. Well, sorta.
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Update. When I stepped back into the family room after writing this, Ellie and Lizzi were standing together, thick as thieves, and the food was all gone. Ellie's face is all messy so she must have had at least some of it herself! So I guess it worked. And I just had to leave the room so that she wasn't backing down in front of me. Meet my mini-teenager.
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2 days ago
2 comments:
I can relate to this. Some days Baby H will eat and eat and other days she simply stares at, plays with, or feeds her food to the cats and dogs.
Last night, after saying "yes" to everything I put on her plate she used her peanut butter as paint and refused to eat a bit of anything else. I assume that is she is truly hungry she would eat, so we left her alone. She seems fine today and she did eat breakfast.
That's such sound advice. I'm slowly getting better at doing that. But it's hard because:
1) Lately Ellie is a big eater. I mean, two adult-sized bowls of oatmeal for breakfast big. And asking for more an hour later. So when she doesn't eat it's weird. Also,
2) Ellie only weighs 24 pounds (just under, actually) although she's average height. The girl is very, very thin. At the bottom of the growth chart thin. So I worry a little when she doesn't eat. But I'm getting better!
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