Parenting and Family Life: February 2004 Archives

I can soooo relate! Couldn't have said it better myself, Sister! I always say I never comprehended what "tired" meant until I became a Sleepy Mommy.

I mentioned before my four year old is eating everything in site and it drives me nuts because I view it as gluttony. It is hard to get out of the house to get food with 5 feet tall snow drifts in the path of my front door, so I am very frustrated when I buy a hude bunch of bananas on Sunday, to see my four year old has eaten them all by Monday afternoon and no one else had a chance to have one. Especially when I purchased enough for everyone to have one a day for the week.

I try to cook healthy and yummy meals, and the rest of the family assures me I do.I am also frustrated that after I found Fastolph sitting in the corner of the pantry on a pile of banana peels, he will not eat his dinner.

I know the poor boy is hungry, he waited until dinner last night and practically consummed a pork tenderloin on his own.

I also think he is bored. His siblings do schoolwork all day, and even though I do some with him, his attention span is not very long. Poor guy is sort of in the odd
man out stage.

Alicia offers some constructive advice:

I almost made a comment about the hungry 4 year old - if you are accurate in your discernment that it is gluttony and not hunger, then I don't have a problem. And if you truly are budgeting food that tightly, I think that it is important to meet the needs of all your children, not just one. But I think that I would offer a constantly 'hungry' 4 year old something nutritious but not necessarily tasty to eat - a hungry child will eat whatever is offered, where as a greedy or bored one will whine "I don't like that!". As a child, I was sometimes so hungy that I ate the pith from the inside of my orange peels, and cracked open the prune kernels and ate the 'almond' inside. My mom had a weight problem and had very warped ideas about how much a growing child needed - I now have a weight problem and my own issues with food - but only one of my 6 kids has weight or food issues, and I guess that is all I can ask for (all 4 girls in my family have issues).

While I am somewhat concerned about weight for me, I worry a great deal more about proper nutrition for all the children. Since Gorbulas is an asthmatic, I worry that proper nutrition is his best line of defense from illness. The same is true for all my children. For example I have never said "Fastolph, do not eat anymore of that because you will get fat." (To be honest, I really do not worry about my kids and weight. In a few years they will no longer be able to eat some of the few things that kids enjoy that adults cannot lie French Fries, let them enjoy them now.). I have said however, "Fastolph, you may not have anymore of that because your brother and sister have not had any." Or "Fastolph, how about a glass of milk instead because I would like to see you get some more calcium for your bones, and less sugar that are in those apples..." Or today "Fastolph, you did not finish your lunch, so you may not have snacks until dinner." He wanted to play instead of eat, so I warned him.

If you could name the one book every child should have read by the time they were, let's say thirteen, what would it be?