crime and punishment: you WILL eat your food

Its days like today I have to ask myself how do you know if the methods you are choosing to raise your kids will ultimately be the best? well the answer is you don't. I do know that screaming back at my children is not the best way, although sometimes that is the easiest way ;)

In one of the parenting seminars I watched she said that there are three things we absolutely can not control with our children. you can't physically make them eat, go to the bathroom, or sleep.

my husband says OH yes you can that just means they don't get off of the toilet until they go (no matter how hard they scream, or if their legs start to get tingly from sitting there so long. and i think eventually sitting in that position their body will tell them they need to let go and go potty) but meals for example. I have many friends (and my husband) who say that kids must sit at the table until X amount of food is gone. Because of my husbands busy work schedule he usually misses all three meals with the family so it is up to me to coax my kids into eating. by dinner I am tuckered out and can only negotiate so much. I could say "you will not leave this table until these bites are gone" but what happens is he just sits there and cries until I want to explode, or he'll literally sit there FOREVER until its time to do something or go somewhere. so who really wins that battle?

In that same parenting seminar she talked about making the punishment fit the crime. So I sit there debating in my own mind (what is a good punishment for this? can i actually implement it? Is it too harsh or not harsh enough?) I've tried to involve him in the process asking "what is a fair consequence for this decision?" of course I have to suggest things and ultimately he agrees with me, but I think that is the important thing I am teaching him. Instead of a battle of wills I am teaching him that there is a consequence to each decision he chooses. (the hardest part is as a parent you HAVE to follow through with it)

Todays example: I gave him some yogurt, cheese and crackers for a snack (because he ate his breakfast/another rule) but when we sat down for lunch and I had made a healthier version of Mac and cheese (not the usual box kind) he quickly decided he was NOT going to eat it. He started crying and asking to go down for his nap. usually I would send him straight to bed. If he was hungry before dinner, oh well, he chose to miss lunch (no snacks until dinner).
but I felt very frustrated! I felt like sending him down for his nap he would win and get out of eating. was being hungry until dinner punishment enough? obviously not because he didn't care and does this ALOT. at the moment my thought was NO! not this time he needs to eat! so I insisted he take a bite. This meant me literally spoon feeding it to him as he screamed and cried. I tried to ignore the crying and constant asking to go to naps. I put down 4 noodles and told him when those were gone he could go to bed.
(well, f I didn't change my tactics he'd probably still be sitting at the table crying)
I though back to the picking and choosing my battles. Was this how I wanted to fight this battle with him? what was he learning from this? mom puts down the food and I won't get down until I eat it? but how did making him sit at the table for hours teach him anything?

In my house we never had crazy rules like you have to sit at the table until your food is gone but what i did know is that I could pig out on snacks all afternoon and therefore not be hungry for dinner, or if I didn't like dinner I could wait until after the dishes were done and everyone was doing their own evening activities I could easily open up the snack cupboard and have at it.

I think this is where you must find balance. you can't just not care and let your kids raise themselves on junk food, but you also can't just fight the battle to always be incharge and right!

(with out just giving up) I told him if he didn't want to eat we needed to talk about it. He said " i really want to take a nap" and I said "well i really want you to eat so we have a problem. how should we solve it?" then we talked about how I had given him a snack and because of it he was not eating his lunch. I told him that this was telling me he could not have snacks before meals and if he chose to go to bed I would take away all snacks for the rest of the week and he agreed.

now does he truly comprehend the severity of NO SNACKS for the WHOLE week? probably not, but we agreed that if he asked for snacks I would warn him that snacks were taken away and if he asked again he would get spankings
(remember at this age approx 3 they have a hard time remembering consequences so you have to find ways to remind them of things you've previously agreed on. we like to draw a picture about whatever we discuss and put it up somewhere to constantly remind him the decision HE made)

now was a whole week a little much? probably and will it be a pain for me ALL week! probably. my husbands theory is you need to be very clear that the parent is in charge and when mom says something you do it! and I agree. your child must know that you are in charge and will not be a pushover, but the lesson I feel like i'm ultimately trying to teach is that there are consequences to all of the decisions YOU choose. if mom chooses all of the decisions and consequences how is the kid suppose to learn? (how silly is it that you could be teaching such an important life lesson through something so simple as eating meals, but every moment with a child is a learning moment)

Like I said I don't claim to be an expert by any means and I constantly ask myself is this the right method? I won't know for 20 years and by then it will be too late ;) but for now the best I can do it try and reason it all out and use these moments to teach my kids instead of be right just for the sake of being the parent and being right. (plus this is a great way to avoid contention/frustration/tears between you and your kids and what mom doesn't want a more peacefully home and relationship with her kids?)

What I learned from Daniel Tiger

We have been having serious anger issues lately with my two and 1/2 year old and I am having the hardest time trying to teach him why it is not ok to throw things/take things/punch people ect. He is actually a very well behaved child but when he does get angry it is like a tornado, quickly touches down, does ALOT of damage, then goes away!
Because of his age he can only understand so much. This means "talking through it" isn't always an option because he just stares at me like "if i sit here and pretend to listen for just a bit longer I know you'll let me leave and go play with my toys" Its times like that I don't know what to do!?
One TV show we have been watching for a long time is Daniel Tiger. It is a cartoon/remake of mr. rogers. It is actually a very cute and sometimes annoying but they have these mini songs that go with each episode. we have tried very hard to use this as a technique and I think it is actually very successful. The one we use the most in our house is "when your feeling frustrated, take a step back and ask for help" but it is so much easier to resort to these little jingles because he remembers them and can relate to them immediately. I don't know how much of a difference this is actually making but this is my attempt to find more creative ways to teach kids who have not fully mentally developed. plus it helps me control myself. All i'm saying is that this is one out of the box method. sometimes its better to let your tv teach the principle and then you inforce it.
with that being said I want to throw out one caution to the wind.... watch the shows your kids watch. make sure they are leaning the things you want them to be learning and that they are not just waisting their time in front of a screen. We are very selective about screen time at our house. what we watch and how long we watch. Kids who are not in school yet don't have a lot of social interaction so they pick up what they watch on the tv. If you don't like how they characters in the show are acting, its time to find something else!