Somebody ought to send this to MeMe Roth!

When I stayed with my Aunt, he had her follow the rule. She was definitely uncomfortable about restricting my access to water, and tried to devise ways to let me have something to drink without directly breaking his rule, but it never worked.

Your friend should give the kids whatever they want to eat. Anything. If they’re going to grow up with the type of person who would put a three-year-old on a diet, they’re going to need a family member who’s on their side to get through it.

I try to think about it from the persepctive of the child–it is a learned and uncomfortable process to not yell and cry at every damn painful thing in the day. Heaven knows sometimes *I* want to have a breakdown three times a day.

Yes, children have emotions and preferences. Still, it seems to me that there is a trade off that is part of growing older, i.e. more responsibility and control versus less control but more care when younger. My child doesn’t have to *like* everything I cook, but yes, she needs to be polite about it. But then, as volcanista mentioned, I was largely discussing bad behavior, not simple preferences.

It works for me, that’s all I can give you.

But for older children, or children who are physically fine but angry/frustrated because their opinions and preferences are being ignored, “calm down” isn’t usually helpful and is a good way to make it seem like the problem is all on their side. (How would you feel if you were consisently offered meals you didn’t like/couldn’t eat but lacked the capabilities to make yourself an alternative? Pretty fucking unhappy, is how I’d feel. And while we can see that there are issues of limitied maternal resources — time, money, energy, ability to be bothered — a child old enough to have and express specific preferences may not get that.)

Does that work? My experience of telling anyone, child or adult, to calm down, is wholly ineffective. Often counterproductive, in fact.

Hah. My personal response to being told to calm down is to rise about 8 points on the rage scale. It’s the complete arrogance of thinking you get to tell another person how to feel! Particularly since the person who feels the need to tell you to calm down is usually the person whose unreasonable behaviour created the problem in the first place.

And in a parent-child dynamic it very much reinforces the discourse that children aren’t really people and don’t have any legitimate emotions (“You can exercise that option when you’re older.) There is no quicker way to create a frustrated, problematic child, I can tell you.

Does that work? My experience of telling anyone, child or adult, to calm down, is wholly ineffective. Often counterproductive, in fact.

But since I often ask my kids what they’d like for dinner, I’m probably some sort of downtrodden softie.