Giving in to Cheetos

My almost two-and-a-half-year-old son is truly amazing.  Being home with him this summer, I've realized just how much I've missed by not seeing him until 4:00 each day.  By evening, he's tuckered out (just like his mommy).  But in the mornings, he is the happiest, snuggliest, giddiest little boy there ever was.

But he's not perfect.  Yesterday we had our first battle over mealtime.  He (unfortunately) is a relatively picky eater, but rather than cater to his wants, we give him what we are eating and nothing else.  Yesterday for lunch, it was sandwiches and chips.  He had peanut butter and jelly and Daddy was sharing cheetos with him.  He took one bite of sandwich, ate the five or six cheetos Daddy had put on his plate, and asked for more.  Daddy said, "Nope. You've got to eat your sandwich."

Enter tears.  Like, giant crocodile tears.  Red face.  Pushing away his plate.  Knocking over his milk (which had a lid, so no harm done there).  Yelling for cheetos.  Across the table, Daddy and I had a whispered conversation and agreed that we would sit there until he ate his sandwich.  It was 12:15.

He begged.  He pleaded.  He remembered his manners.  "Cheetos, PLEASE!" he cried.  "If you take a bite of sandwich, you can have a cheeto," Daddy said.  We even took everything off his plate except one little bite of sandwich.  Still, he would not budge.  "Cheetos, PLEASE!"  More tears.  More yells.  We held up the cheeto and the hunk of sandwich so he could see both.  To no avail.

By 12:30, I told my husband he could go get work done and that I would be happy to sit here until our son was prepared to eat.  But inside I was thinking, "Is this the right thing?  If some stranger walked in off the street and witnessed the spectacle taking place in our dining room, what would they think of us?"  Then, I was gently reminded that we are parents.  We don't make decisions based on what others think.  We must do what is best for our child.  Sure, it would have been easy to give him cheetos.  It's what he wanted, after all.  Would have saved me time, effort, and energy.  (It's seriously draining to listen to your kid cry like that.)  But what would it accomplish?  (This is where being a teacher, and seeing what this type of behavior looks like when you fast-forward ten years, is most helpful.)

Then, after a grand total of twenty minutes and what felt like the millionth time of explaining, "If you eat this bite of sandwich, you can have a cheeto," something amazing happened.  He looked down at his plate, picked up the hunk of sandwich, and ate it.  I couldn't help myself - I screamed, clapped, told him what a great job he did, and very happily handed him the cheeto.  He asked for more, so I gave him another bite of sandwich, which he ate without question, and another cheeto.  This continued until his plate looked like this:

That's about eight bites of sandwich and eight cheetos.  By this time he was "all done sandwich, Mommy."  I cleared his plate for him to take into the kitchen, (but then promptly rearranged it for the picture above), hugged him close and kissed him, and thanked him for making a good choice.  Then we headed off to the bath.  He'd made quite a mess of himself by that point!

Parenting is hard.  Much harder than I ever thought it would be when I watched kids run amok through restaurants or shook my head at a child throwing a temper-tantrum in the grocery store.  But the bottom line is discipline.

Proverbs 13:24 reads, "Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him."  

We didn't use a rod, but the spirit of this verse is saying that to deny your child discipline is to ultimately do him a great disservice.  If he doesn't learn discipline now when he is young, how is he going to learn it when he is five?  Twelve?  Twenty?  He needs to learn it now.  Would he have been ruined for life if we didn't make him eat his sandwich?  Probably not.  Would it have been easier on us to just give him the cheetos?  Definitely.  But the long-term fruits of discipline are so much more important than just giving in to cheetos.