Expanding on the topic of children and their observation power, the following happened between me and S.
S is not at all a foodie; he has never been one. So if given a chance, he can eat his meal for more than a couple of hours. That is how disinterested he is in a meal. I have always been working on S’s eating. Since most of what I have worked with before (pleases, yells, stories and sometimes feeding (which I am not a great fan of)) have ended up in high levels of irritation, I thought of trying a different technique for S to eat all of his food (an entire balanced meal) within half an hour. The most important part is ALL FOOD and HALF AN HOUR… I thought that a technique which will show him that there are consequences to his actions will make him more responsible and also lessen my irritation levels. Hence I started the following technique – put the plate of food in front of S, tell him how much time he has, just observe and remove the plate once the allotted time was up. This method has many other caveats not mentioned here- make the food very interesting (different shapes and variety), no multi-tasking during meal time, not losing my balance/temper, making food more fun and more...
So, finally one day everything went as planned. S ate his meal in less than half hour and he ate everything on his plate. (Though I gave him his choice of food item – roti instead of rice).After his meal I told him,
Myself: See Siddhu, how easy it was when you ate on time, without much fuss and most of what was on your plate…Everybody is happy, Siddhu’s tummy, Siddhu and Amma…So, can you eat like this everyday????
S: Yeah. But Amma, you did not scr...talk loudly, loudly and more loudly, shouting at small little cute Siddhu saying ‘Eat, Eat, Chew, Swallow…..’ like you do every day. You did not very very upset or mad at me…But Amma, what do you always say upset and not sad?
Myself: Because sad is only sad; but upset is sad + angry.
S: So, that means you did not get sad and angry at me because I ate all my food very very quickly. OK, Amma. Then every day I promise I will eat very quickly and not make you upset while eating. But will you promise me that you will not talk very loudly with me while eating…Pls, amma?
Myself: Promise Siddhu…
(Not that he kept his promise. But at least it is getting better…)
He just could not get himself to say the word scream or yell. Instead he only said ‘talk loudly…’..So, sweet…
And that is when I realized that come what may, I should not yell at S. He can only be won by Love...trying hard to practice the same - hard because both my boys together driver me nuts sometimes - but that is what it is and I AM LOVING EVERY BIT OF THAT CRAZINESS....So, far I have been pretty successful at not yelling at S (but I must admit that the meal time is easier because of hubby dear. He has committed to taking care of S's meal times every single day)...
So, lesson learnt from my little master - No yelling at home, only firm talking...
P.S. - I have dealt with a lot of eating issues in S and will be blogging about all my techniques used in another post pretty soon.
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