Not In Kansas Anymore (NIKA)

The Battle Has Begun

This morning we experienced the beginning of what is likely to be an on-again, off-again battle for the next 18 years or so: the battle of wills.

I've had a cold for over a week and a half now, and the dry cough has been keeping me up at night. So I'm more cranky and short-tempered than normal. Dorothy's breakfast usually consists of baby oatmeal and yogurt. If I eat breakfast first, she'll get an "appetizer" of bites of my bagel. And maybe every other day or so, I'll give her a sausage, either as a supplement or a substitute.

This morning, she ate first, and I decided to give her some sausage, since she loves it so much and she didn't get much, if any, meat yesterday. I normally give her a few bites of the yogurt and the oatmeal, then give her a couple bites of sausage, then repeat. Today, I got one bit of yogurt into her before she started refusing any more spoonfuls. I eventually got another spoonful or two into her, then twice gave her a fork with a piece of sausage on it, both of which were quickly gobbled down. Then I brought the oatmeal back, and she eventually decided that using the fork to scoop up oatmeal was OK for a few bites. But when she was done with that, I insisted that she clean off the fork that still had oatmeal on it, and she refused. There wasn't much oatmeal on the fork, but I maintained my position that she needed to stick the fork in her mouth to "finish" what she'd picked up (even though half of it had dripped off in the course of her waving it about). At some point she'd wound up dipping the fork back into the oatmeal, and then during some struggle or other, a bunch of it got flung backwards over her shoulder, landing on the floor.

If you ask anyone in my family, they'll tell you that I'm obsessed with being clean (not necessarily neat, just clean). They exaggerate (I'm happy to get filthy hands when working with tools), but in certain situations I am very opinionated on things being clean. One of my "buttons" that Dorothy may (or may not - it could be circumstance) be learning to push is a lack of patience with food thrown around the dining room, especially on the carpet.

Needless to say, my lack of sleep, along with my attitude towards messy eating (at this point, there was food on the floor, the high chair, my fingers and her arms) and the lengthening "battle" over eating, all combined to push me over the top. I yelled when the food got thrown over her shoulder onto the floor, and went to clean it up. At that point, Elizabeth came out and took over, telling me to go elsewhere. She eventually got Dorothy to eat a bunch of yogurt and oatmeal, plus some sausage.

On the one hand, Elizabeth is probably right when she said that I'd been taking Dorothy's behavior personally, rather than as the normal development of a toddler seeking to test limits. On the other hand, I did not want her to learn that complaining and refusing food is a way to get only the good food. More generally, I don't want her to think she can get around the "rules" that Daddy makes if she just becomes difficult enough. Now that I'm thinking about it in terms of a toddler testing limits (I obviously wasn't in this kind of frame of mind this morning), I'll probably be able to handle these situations a little better in the future.

This entire episode is strongly reminiscent of a childhood experience I had with my own Dad. When I was roughly kindergarten age, we were out in Arizona on vacation, visiting some family. Oatmeal (which I hate to this day) was being served for breakfast, and I didn't want any. My Dad decided I was going to eat it, no matter what, and made me eat some. I did, then quickly threw up. Boy, was he mad. So today's episode with Dorothy must be some kind of karmic payback. And we can all see where I got my short temper from. :-)

Posted by Tom Nugent at June 8, 2005 04:55 PM