Friday, May 4, 2012

A Plan Gone Bad

Elise never eats her lunch at school.  Never.  She would rather go to recess.  She has a bowl of cereal for breakfast and then doesn't eat again until 7 hours later when she returns home from school.  Unless, of course, I put cookies in her lunch.  Then she eats those and nothing else.  I have tried everything.  I even ask her what I could put in her lunch that she would eat, but it never works.  This bothers me for many reasons.  The first is obviously that this can not be healthy, and I'm sure her hungry brain couldn't possibly be functioning at it's best.  But beyond that, I get tired of making lunches everyday which don't get eaten.  In a moment of frustration this morning while making her lunch I told her that if she didn't eat her peanut butter sandwich for lunch today then she would be eating it for dinner tonight.  And guess what?  She didn't eat it.  So I got it out at dinner and put it on her plate to which she exclaimed, "Yes! I'm so glad I didn't eat my sandwich for lunch!  Now I don't have to eat a yucky chicken quesadilla!"  Yep, I think I just rewarded her for not eating her lunch.  What I failed to consider was that my picky little eater loves peanut butter sandwiches, and cries about what we have for dinner at least 80% of the time.  Maybe I should have saved it until Monday and put it in her lunch again then.  Three day old sandwich can't be good.  But then she probably wouldn't eat her lunch Monday anyway so she probably wouldn't even care.  Maybe I should save myself some trouble by making her one lunch per week and just letting her take the same one all week long.  Do you think someone at the school would report me for some sort of strange child abuse or neglect?

1 comment:

Jordan and Jodi said...

I haven't been in touch with the blogging world for a LONG time. When I read this I laughed and laughed. Thanks! How funny. Who knew that was going to back fire? What about if you made her favorite dinner (but tell her that morning the deal is you have to eat your lunch or you won't get your to eat your favorite dinner tonight because you'll be eating your lunch) and see what happens! :) Keep them coming. I love it. Being a parent is such a hard job sometimes!