On being three
Feb. 4th, 2008 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beth_leonardBeing three means being willing to try new things. And reject others.
Tonight I told Peter that dinner was going to be leftovers, specifically Chicken Divan (a favortie) and Kilbasa & applesause (also a favorite) with his choice of fruit or vege from the refrigerator.
This of course sent my overtired little darling into screaming fits. (Giving up naps really has improved my life. Late afternoons used to be worse.) "Nooooo. I don't want that. I want something elssssseeeee!"
In this family, the dining rule is basically "I cook it. You eat it." While I do make reasonable allowances for letting Peter suggest appropriate side dishes and help cook, I am most certainly not a short order cook and never have been. There is no past history or real reason for his reaction tonight other than he's overtired.
While I was juggling the baby in one hand and reheating with the other, Peter stood with the refrigerator door open saying "I don't want that" to everything in sight.
Except the box of baking soda.
"Mommy I want this for dinner!" he exclaims excitedly, because he knows he must eat something, and anything he's never had before has got to be better than what's in there now.
Sigh. Got to love being three.
--Beth
Tonight I told Peter that dinner was going to be leftovers, specifically Chicken Divan (a favortie) and Kilbasa & applesause (also a favorite) with his choice of fruit or vege from the refrigerator.
This of course sent my overtired little darling into screaming fits. (Giving up naps really has improved my life. Late afternoons used to be worse.) "Nooooo. I don't want that. I want something elssssseeeee!"
In this family, the dining rule is basically "I cook it. You eat it." While I do make reasonable allowances for letting Peter suggest appropriate side dishes and help cook, I am most certainly not a short order cook and never have been. There is no past history or real reason for his reaction tonight other than he's overtired.
While I was juggling the baby in one hand and reheating with the other, Peter stood with the refrigerator door open saying "I don't want that" to everything in sight.
Except the box of baking soda.
"Mommy I want this for dinner!" he exclaims excitedly, because he knows he must eat something, and anything he's never had before has got to be better than what's in there now.
Sigh. Got to love being three.
--Beth
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Date: 2008-02-05 01:36 pm (UTC)Last week, T had a couple episodes of this sort of thing. The first time, he spent 20 minutes screaming because I'd gotten dressed and he hadn't wanted me to. He's never been given control over my dressing time before; no reason to expect he should have a say in this; but there you go. The second time, I'd told him to start stacking up his stackable cups (a favorite bath-time toy) because he needed to get out of the bath soon. He got them half-way stacked, then decided that he wanted to count the dots in the bottoms of the cups, and started unstacking them so he could do this. I gave him a couple opportunities to return to stacking them up, and then simply scooped them up, stacked them myself, declared that he couldn't have them in his next bath (a warning that this was coming had been included in the opportunities to stack them himself), put them on a high shelf, and then lifted him out of the bath and wrapped him in a towel. He spent the next 20-30 minutes naked, screaming at me that he would only stop screaming if I let him count the dots. Finally, I told him that he could be happy, get dressed, and eat breakfast, or he could be unhappy and scream; which would he prefer?, and he chose to be happy. The screaming stopped instantly, like an alarm suddenly turned off.
I can deal with babies. Babies are, IMO, pretty easy. Three-year-olds may well defeat me one of these days.
Newt