Quote:
Originally Posted by ProudParkie
She knows all the little tricks to getting what she wants( I.E. wanting water when it's bedtime in order to stay up later or puppy dog sad eyes when she doesn't want to eat veggies). Sometimes I give in but other times I don't
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That's the issue. You are not being consistent. Start being consistent.
When my son was 4, he started throwing terrible temper tantrums, but only at his dad's (we were divorced by that time).
With me, he'd occassionally take a jab at it, but I just turned him off. Whatever it was he was tantrumming over, it was an immediate, automatic, unchangeable no. So he really didn't try it with me much.
One day he tried a tantrum in the car and I told him "Well, now its a definite no to what you wanted, where before it was a maybe. Why do you keep trying this? You KNOW it doesn't work with me."
He immediately stopped crying (all beet red in the face he was, too, LOL!) and said: "Why not? It works with my DAD."
I told his dad all about this conversation and he STILL never got over the whole giving-in-to-tantrums thing. He just plain didn't believe me, was the issue.
Fortunately (as I was intent on raising a decent human being) he got over it even with his dad. Not because of anything his dad did but because he just took to the training. As long as *I* was consistent with him, and honest, and all that goes along with being an up-front parent, he learned to do Right even when he knew he could use Might (the power of the tantrum!), even when I was not around.
Really that is the ultimate goal of every parent - for your child to do Right even when you are not around.
To help them learn to do that you must (among other things) be consistent and fair.
Consistent means you have set rules for things like bedtime and what happens if you don't eat your vegetables.
Fair means the consequences are not unrelated to the behavior or over the top.
Sending a child to bed without dinner is always unfair and unreasonable.
Telling them no desert or some other special food item that they particularly love if they won't eat the veggies is reasonable, but insisting that they eat EVERY type of vegetable at all times is unfair.
So if they really really really hate broccoli, asparagus, and beets, but they will eat peas, green beans, carrots, and lima beans - it would be unfair to only offer them the first three when the last 4 will do just as well on a regular basis.
The issue with veggies is to find something (other than corn) that they will eat, not to force them to eat all kinds of vegetables whether cooked or raw or deep fried or what have you. Then offer those choices to them regularly, with only occasional forays into "new" items, and even rarer offerings of something they say they hate. Thus they should rarely be missing the special treat.
Another way to approach the veggie issue is to let your daughter select the next day's meal, within reason of course. So have her pick her favorite foods in all categories - protein, vegetable, drink, and dessert. Make a list of these items. So "chocolate cake" would not be an entre, LOL!
So alternate who gets to set the menu each evening. You could take M, W and F, and she could do T, Th, and Sa. You could alternate Sundays or make it a "free" day and let her always pick Sunday no matter what.
So if she eats her veggies on the days you set the menu, she gets her choice of menu the next day.
But if she doesn't eat her veggies (and you're being reasonable about it, not trying to force her to eat something you KNOW she hates), then YOU get to set the menu the next day - and no desert for her tonight.
If it all works out, you might be eating hot dogs, mac 'n cheese, and fish sticks three days out of the week, but at least she will be (usually) eating her veggies at least on those days that she sets the menu.
And btw - sweet corn doesn't count as a "vegetable". Make corn a "special treat" if she likes it. But it has almost no nutritional value, unfortunately. I speak as a lover of sweet corn. It's really a grain anyway. I love it above all other things vegetable-like (with the possible exception of watermelon) but I also acknowledge its failure to add anything substantive to my diet, LOL!
Do go easy on the desert thing. When I was a kid, dessert was often canned peaches or other fruit rather than cake and pie and the like. If she really likes bananas, or apples, or something like that, make that her desert more often than not. Save the ice cream and pie and cake for holidays and birthdays. Muffins might make a good desert once in awhile, too.
Bedtimes are usually not that hard. A consistent rule for bedtime at 8 PM is fair for a 5 year-old. Maybe 9 PM on a school night for a teenager. And yes, it has been decades since I was a teenager, so maybe that seems a bit early by today's standards.
But regardless, nothing past 10 AM and that only if they're keeping their grades up to the best of their abilities. Some kids are C students even when they work hard at it so rather than being a jerk about grades per se, be a jerk about getting their homework done and turned in on time, and cooperating in class. As time passes you should be able to judge what is and is not possible for your child academically. Respond to what IS and not what you would like to be.
I don't buy the excuse of staying up late to watch some stupid TV show. That's what there are VCRs, DVD recorders, TVO, and streaming for. Record it and get up early to watch it before school, or stream it earlier in the evening, but bedtime is bedtime and is not to be disrupted for any TV show.
Except maybe the end of the world. I would let my kid stay up late to watch that I guess. Well, actually I would try to distract them from the end of the world by letting them stay up and watch just about anything else, LOL!
Setting bedtime at 6PM would be unfair for just about any age though (unless for some reason your family gets up at 3 AM in the morning to start your day).
Most parenting is just common sense, really. Go to some parenting classes or join a single parent's group, you just need some examples and someone to vent to and find some emotional support for yourself so you can turn around and give that same support right back to your daughter.
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give it a try love..
