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| "Make my mom make me more....". Are you freaking kidding me?!?!?!? |
I was perusing Facebook and found the following link: http://twentytwowords.com/picky-eaters-gallery/gallery/14/. It's all about kids and their ridiculous picky eating habits. It's meant to be cute but it terrifies me that this many children are so coddled in every teensy, tiny, itsy, bitsy moment. It reminded me of a blog post I read a while back insisting parents don't give in when kiddos are frustrated because they don't want "that sippy cup". Basically, it was about making sure you, the parent, stays in the drivers seat and I couldn't agree more.
It's not always easy to not give in. Sometimes I think, "what harm would it be to dirty 5 cups before we find the one he likes" or "why not make him a PB&J when I already made him spaghetti" but the harm is that I would be validating trivial drama, giving Sam the upper hand, and now I have 5 more cups to wash and in the sea of dirty dishes that my already busy life makes a giant pain in the ass anyway AND I'm also now a short-order cook. No thanks! So it's a VERY rare, VERY VERY rare, moment when I give in. The whining and bitching and moaning is not more than I can handle and WAYYYYYY more importantly, I don't want to raise an entitled asshole. Because really, being a parent isn't about how to make things easier for me, it's about raising a good person who functions in the real world.
Maybe this whole things seems trivial but I guarantee that the parents giving in to the trivial things are giving in to ALL of the trivial things. And probably not-so-trivial arguments too. It's a symptom of a much bigger thing. I love my son. I want him to be happy with my whole heart. But I also want him to be a good person who understands that in life you don't get EXACTLY what you want all the time. So I give him the zombie cup (if it already has something in it) instead of the Nemo cup. And I say no sometimes. And I don't feel bad about any of it.
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