Thursday, November 03, 2011

Epic Fail at Parenting

My youngest won't eat. Well actually he will eat as long as it's his choice of food in his own sweet time, which would be okay if my life solely revolved around his eating habits but it does not.

When I got home at 5.45pm tonight he was once again refusing to even try the food that Craig had cooked him so I turned off the tv and sat him in the kitchen with me while I cleaned (and yes I just confessed that my kids sit and eat while watching a bit of telly sometimes).
He still refused to eat and I got angry and did the discipline thing which was a bit of a nightmare when he's pointedly asking "why?" and I'm saying because daddy cooked it and you don't waste food and his face says huh? and then he repeats why? So I said okay if you won't eat it you can just go to bed. So he looked at me with defiance and went to his bedroom and got in bed, even though he was crying at this point and it was only 6pm.

When I got back to the kitchen and sat down it felt horrible. It's only 6pm and he's in bed already, which means I won't get to see him today. Sometimes I feel like such a crap mum.

After 10 minutes I went in to see him and he was fast asleep. He didn't nap today and I guess he had a snack at 4pm so probably wasn't hungry. He looked so angelic while he was sleeping that it was a double whammy to my guilt bank.

So here's the struggle for me. I can't ignore his behaviour and just let him eat crappy food whenever he wants, which means I'll always have a struggle on my hands. But I need to learn to deal with that better. I even asked myself today what Nanny 911 would do. That isn't a cry for help in case any friends are thinking about signing me up for nanny's help. I would say a big fat NO. Of course if any of my real mummy friends want to offer advice I'd much appreciate it.

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