Growing Up In Oz

I don’t know how to parent my {almost} 3 year old.

::deep breath::

I’m learning to be okay with this… and you should too.

Last night after another particularly lovely dinner battle where I asked my child to stop putting her pasta on the table and stop playing with it and stop rubbing her hands on her shirt and FOR GOD’S SAKE EAT A FEW BITES OF DINNER, I tweeted this.

You see, in an effort to try and get Madison to eat last night I thought the lure of a trip to the park would be a great idea. The weather has been gorgeous and on Mondays the kids are home with one of their grandmothers so they don’t have the playground like they do at school.

I asked, I begged and then I threatened. And then when she didn’t eat and continued to pick her pasta up with the fork, take it off the fork and then place it on the table (seriously, why do kids do this kind of crap?) I ended dinner and proclaimed there would be no trip to the park.

And then I sat on the stool in our kitchen, sighed and tweeted this.

A few minutes passed by and I realized what I wrote and was overcome by an insane amount of guilt. I had made this about me. In some crazy and delusional place in my brain I convinced myself that it was unfair that we couldn’t go to the park because my {almost} 3 year old wouldn’t listen. All the while she was sitting in her room, upset that we weren’t going.

Ridiculous.

I sat there hemming and hawing to my husband, wondering why she couldn’t just listen and eat her dinner so that we could all be blissfully running around the park right now enjoying the weather.  ”What am I doing wrong?” I kept asking him. I swear, I should have that printed on a t-shirt and walk around with it because I ask it several times per day.

“Nothing,” he said. “Kids are just like that.”

And I think in my messed up little world where a reason needs to be associated with every thought and action, I have a hard time processing that my kid acts like this “just because.” In the end, we ended up at the park. She called my bluff and won last night… we needed to get out of the house and get a fresh start.

And  later that night my husband, ever the voice of reason, sat there calmly and said- we just need to try something different.

We decided the pleading and begging and bribes have to stop. No more “three more bites and we can go watch a Dora.” No more “If you eat most of your dinner we can play at the park.” From now on we are going to take a more laid back approach to dinner. She can eat what’s on her plate, or not. She can have until we are done cleaning up dinner to finish. If she’s not done we’ll save it for later. If she wants dessert later? She can have her dinner first.

It’s a tactic that we’ve tried and had work before but in an effort to actually get her to eat I started trying the bribes again (which don’t work at all).  It sounds easy but let me tell you…  it is hard to watch your child not eat their dinner, ask for food later proclaiming they are hungry and yet STILL refuse to eat their dinner and then send them to bed without anything to eat.  Because they will try to call your bluff. I promise.

So I’m learning to try and go with the flow with this whole parenting gig. Slowly realizing that I’m not doing it wrong all the time and my {almost} 3 year old isn’t in her room plotting ways to go against everything I ask her to do. Although sometimes I really, really think she is.

And I’m also learning to deal with the fact that sometimes I am doing it wrong. Sometimes I have to step back and try something else. Sometimes I have to give in when I don’t want to, break the rules I’ve set and go down a new path. It’s taking a lot of effort for my Type A personality to bend so far but I’m working on it.

So, seriously don’t worry if you think you are doing it all wrong. Chances are you aren’t… but even if you are, I probably am too.

And in case you were wondering how that blissful trip to the park went? Well, it ended in carrying both children to the car in tears. Kids are swell.

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