We were having a discussion last night about whether or not Ella should be allowed "something else to eat" (read: something sweet and unhealthy) after she'd finished her dinner. I insisted that she should not be allowed to because I was pretty sure she'd been feeding some of her dinner to the dog when I had walked out of the room. Walking out of the room and leaving her alone to finish her dinner is my newest strategy to try prompt her into eating faster/at all.
Ella - Can I have something else to eat now?
Me - No, because you didn't eat all your food
Ella - But I did eat it all, look!
Me - No, you gave some to the dog, so you did not eat it yourself.
[The same arguments were used a few times until Ella realised she wouldn't get anywhere with that line of defense and changed her strategy…]
Ella - But I'm very nice?!
I'm proud to say that her making me laugh did not tempt me to cave in on this one.
The dinner rules as of yesterday are now:
Dessert/biscuits will only be distributed if said child:
a. eats most of her dinner
b. without the assistance of other people of animals
Dinner plate will be removed immediately if said child:
a. Gets up from the table without parent's permission
b. displays clearly anti-social behaviour towards parent or pet
If child does not show clear signs of progressing with eating of said dinner:
a. parent will retreat to other room or outside area
b. dog will be removed from room in which dinner is present also.
And so I keep fine-tuning our family constitution in my capacity of family dictator. One day I'll publish our lawbook, maybe for Ella to use with her children in a far and distant future?
2 comments:
ha ha - we didn't have the nice constitutional options here, we went straight to dictatorship "eat or monster mummy comes, and no-one likes monster mummy!"
I am now monster auntie for my niece your daughter's age...
Can I have an autographed copy of the lawbook when you publish it? ;)
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