Do you ever wish that your child was slightly thick, just enough so you can pull the wool over their eyes? Madame has been showing flashes of genius lately, not Mensa level and it’s not consistent, but just enough to worry me. She definitely didn’t get this from her father.
Madame was a brilliant eater and like many children when she hit 2.5 this all changed. Many people warned me about this but honestly I didn’t believe them. She’d eat just about anything, including liver, that I put in front of her and her father and I are not picky eaters.
Anyhow, we are now struggling with meal times. But, I’m determined to not make it into a battle. We offer her one meal choice, if she doesn’t eat it we nonchalantly wrap it up, put it aside and serve it to her again the next time she says she’s hungry. I’m not going to be one of those mum’s who cooks several different meals each night. Then on our own terms we offer her toast just before bed, if we didn’t she’d wake up in the night hungry and we’d be the losers.
On the weekend, when we were eating as a family, which is a rare occurrence, she brought her Jessie doll to the table. I know this is a bad idea and we don’t normally allow toys at the table but in this case I just wanted to focus on one thing at a time. So, long story short, I said ‘if you don’t eat your dinner I’m putting Jessie in the loft’. She didn’t eat her dinner so I hid Jessie.
Bless her…I found her wandering around the landing at about 4am stressed looking for her Jessie doll and I’m not that mean so I gave it back to her. However, that’s not the clever bit.
The following night we all sat down to dinner again, she ate fairly well, but after dinner she hopped down and proceeded to rummage around in the cupboard under the stairs. I wondered what the hell she was doing…….then I worked it out. She’d hidden Jessie before we had dinner! The clever so and so…..
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