Sometimes food phases lasted a few weeks. Others lasted months…even a year or more. I didn’t mind. I tend to be like that myself. So when one phase was over and a new one was begun, I just rolled with it…except when it came to Emma and her Lucky Charms.
When she first started eating them she couldn’t even
pronounce it correctly. Instead of Lucky Charms, she said Yucky Charms. Again,
not big deal. What was a big deal,
though, was the fact that she started picking out “the luckys’, aka colorful crunchy
marshmallows, eating them, and leaving the cereal in the bowl.
After a few days of this, it got to be a battle of wills.
Sometimes I won. Sometimes she did. This went on for the duration of two or three
boxes of cereal. Each time she finished a box, she insisted that’s what she
wanted for breakfast, so I’d buy more. A new box of cereal didn’t mean a new
(and better) attitude, though. Emma still tried to get by with just eating the
luckys. When I finally decided (or figured out) the battle of the luckys wasn’t worth fighting, I informed Emma she had to choose a new breakfast food. I was tired of fighting over cereal. If memory serves me correctly, the end of the luckys was the beginning of cheesy eggs. That’s not really important, though. What is important, however, is the lesson I want you to learn from my family’s little breakfast club.
The lesson I want to leave with you is this: As a parent,
you need to take a firm stand when it comes to making sure your kids take the
good with the bad…the bitter with the sweet…the work with the fun…the—well, you
get the point.
Let your kids—no, insist
that your kids—have the privilege of seeing things through to the end. And
that includes when the end isn’t fun or doesn’t meet their expectations. For
example:
*Don’t let your kids quit the team mid-season because they
don’t want to practice or because it’s no fun. Life isn’t all about fun. It’s
about fulfilling commitments and seeing something through to the end.
*Don’t let your kids pick at their food or refuse to eat
what you serve for dinner, then give them snacks because they are ‘starving’
thirty minutes later.
*Don’t finish a school project for them because they ‘can’t’,
because they think it’s a senseless assignment, or whatever other excuse they
give you. Insist they do it.
*Don’t take over the care of a pet they promised to take
care of (cross their heart)…then get tired of. Insist they live up to their end
of the bargain or give the pet to someone who will.
To a lot of you, Emma’s finicky cereal-eating might not be a
big deal. You might say, it was just cereal and it would pass. But it wasn’t
just cereal.
It was about respecting the rules and learning to be responsible
instead of wasteful.
It was about keeping her word. She promised (yes, she used
that word) she would eat both the luckys and the cereal, so she needed to know
a promise is more than a bunch of words.
It was about learning that life doesn’t always give you what
you want and realizing life is about a lot more than just enjoying the luckys
(the good things and positive experiences).As parents we definitely want to make sure our children’s lives are full of luckys, but remember this: when life is all about luckys, it doesn’t take long for a child to forget to be thankful for the luckys in their life.
Love,
Momma D
Copyright 2018 Darla Noble. No part of this can be used or copied without permission from the author.
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