My sweet girl is allergic to corn. You'll come to know, if you spend any time here at all, that corn is everywhere and everywhere is corn. So her diet is pretty limited. Not nearly as extreme as some kids I know, but still. It makes life a considerable amount more difficult for us. On Sundays, we always have bacon and eggs for breakfast. Always. Without fail. But, since the holidays began, the only kind of bacon she can eat, outside of us butchering our own pig, is unavailable. To make it up to her (she is incredibly disappointed) I told her I'd make waffles this morning. I said this on Friday night.
This morning the first thing she said to me was not, "Good morning, Mama! I hope you slept well. It's so wonderful to see you!" No. Instead her eyes peered up at me expectantly as she grinned and said, "Are you making waffles today?" Yes, sweetheart. Yes I am.
All went well as both she and her 18-month-old sister helped me mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients, even beat some egg whites for texture. They helped me pour the wet into the dry, and even kept a respectful distance from the hellfire-hot waffle iron.
When the first waffle hit the plate, big sis was on it. "Can I have that one mama? Can I have that one? I really want that one." Patiently she waited as, one by one, we poured and waited. Six whole waffles later, she finally got her wish and was given a whole, entire waffle complete with butter and syrup to go with her eggs.
Breakfast continued in a similarly uneventful manner until her waffle was nearly gone. Her first big, huge waffle wasn't even finished yet, and now she was asking for another one. Hmm. What I don't want to do is to make food a power struggle. What I do want to do is model restraint and help my kids understand what portion sizes are, how much of each macronutrient we should eat in relation to the others, and why each is important. "Let's finish what we have first, before we get any more." Not, for the record, an acceptable answer to a 3-year-old. She did finish, and when I explained that the 2 big waffles were going in the freezer for later and that she would get one section, or 1/4 of a waffle, she lost her mind.
Quarter-waffle in hand, she let out the biggest, loudest scream and continued on that path for about 10 minutes. We took her to her room to calm down. I hugged her. We reminded her that screaming like a beast has never resulted in her getting the thing we said she couldn't have in the first place. We reminded her of why we were saving the waffles and why she shouldn't be eating so much waffle in one sitting anyway. She was really, really worked up. Eventually she ate the quarter-waffle in the same way she ate the four quarters before it: by dipping it quietly into the syrup on the corner of her plate and enjoying every last bite. She apologized for yelling, she said she didn't know why she was crying, and I felt like a huge jerk.
I know as a parent I need to hold my ground when I am convinced I'm doing the right thing, but what's a food addict to do when food becomes the ground over which we're battling?
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