I wonder if she thinks that I actually enjoy this?!
This is Hannah sitting at the dinner table, crying because we are making her eat before she can get down.
Suppertime is not always fun at our house.
It usually starts out stressful before I have even left for work.
The daily question 'WFS?' (what's for supper?)
Shame on me (us) that we don't plan ahead and lay out a schedule but it never really sounds like a 'fun' thing to do. I know that the pay-out would be well worth it and start our evenings out on a better course but it is hard to come up with new ideas, etc.
Not my favorite thing to do. I have tried different websites and other ideas for trying to get more organized about this but just like everything else, sometimes I have TOO many ideas that I end up doing nothing because I start with a small idea like 'I should plan a weekly meal calendar, go shopping to make sure we have all ingredients' and it turns into I should go through all of our cookbooks strolling for ideas, print them on recipe cards and then hang them on the fridge- in the meantime we should take an inventory of all the food we already have and find a way to catalog, etc, etc, etc.
Great ideas and intentions. Not so good with execution. I need to work on that but that will be for a different day....
Anyways, back to the point.
Daily question of what to have for supper. Sometimes tons of ideas, other days struggle.
Then I get home from work, usually between 5 and 5:30, and I walk into a house of hungry people.
Brian is usually already in the process of making supper, the kids are either trying to get his attention, fighting, playing, or watching tv.
Within about 30 minutes of walking through the door (usually less) we are sitting at the table eating.
Hannah goes through these spurts where she won't eat. She is always talking throughout dinner and saying she isn't hungry.
Of course the minute she were to get down she starts begging for a treat. Yeah right, little one! Nice try!
We have tried various things and usually the only thing that works is to tell her without eating there is no treat. That usually does the trick but it can take a long time some nights.
Brian is much more strict than me in this area. He would like to set a timer and if she isn't done eating in that timeframe than her plate goes away, she gets down and no treat.
I am much more relaxed about it. If you don't want to eat, get down, you won't get a treat and if you ask to eat something later you can finish your dinner. I like to think that it is patience but when I think about it I am sure that he is probably right. We need to just have a few nights of fits and fussing and she will see that she has one chance to eat. When she gets to kindergarten they aren't going to let her sit at the table and eat for 45 minutes.
It's hard for me. I want her to eat but at the same time don't want her to get some type of 'issue' with food because she is forced to eat or forced to shove food in 10 minutes. It is a tricky situation for me.
I do know that we need to do something different it's just finding the right balance.
I don't normally think that she is intentionally 'playing' me. I know sometimes she is, probably most of the time, but overall she is a good kid so I don't find the need to be so hard on her and things she does.
A timer is probably a really good idea but now trying to determine how long it should take. That's the tricky part.
Wish me luck!
She was not happy with me when she saw the other pictures and asked me to take another one.
P.S. She ended up eating everything on her plate but it took her about 45 minutes.
Got down and immediately said 'I'm hungry, I need a treat!"
