The Nuclear Option

The problem with going nuclear is that there is nowhere to go from there, and that is pretty much the place we've found ourselves already with Norah.

Disciplining Norah is turning out to be MUCH more difficult than it ever has been with Gabe. Gabe, is one of nature's pleasers. He wants to make people happy and, when he knows there is a threat of trouble, he will try to self-correct to keep people happy. Well, in broad terms--specifically that doesn't always pan out, exactly. Gabe gets genuinely upset if he knows someone is disappointed with something that he's done. Norah, not so much. In fact, and this is the frustrating part, there doesn't seem to be much that Norah won't just shake off.

Strangely, typing this out reminded me of a scene from Malcolm in the Middle, a show that I didn't watch very often and, really, has had next to no impact on my life. I'm not sure why this scene would stick in my mind, but it is particularly relevant right now and fills me with a sort of quiet dread. The scene involves the parents and the second oldest child (I can't remember any of their names). The oldest and second oldest children are notorious problem children. When this episode takes place, the second oldest has discovered a love for cooking, the first thing he has ever truly loved doing. When he does something bad, his parents ground him from the kitchen, and he becomes genuinely upset at the prospect. And the parents become giddy and explain to the audience that this is the first time they've ever had something to hold over his head that might dissuade him from doing bad things. They sent him to his room and he just played and didn't come out when his grounding was over. They grounded him from TV or video games and he just found something else to do. Nothing they did had any effect on him until he actually loved something enough to miss it when it was gone. And they didn't find that thing until he was in high school.

I'm afraid that is what is going to happen with Norah, and we're starting to see evidence of it already.

Her picky eating has become a problem. In the good ole days, we could reliably get her to eat "things that are brown." Now, there are about five foods that she will eat--and all of them are dairy or pre-packaged and fried. And there is little that we've tried that works for changing this, but we keep trying. And last night and this morning we got fed up and went nuclear on her--choosing the most severe punishments we could think of to try to get her to eat what I made for dinner last night.

First, let me point out what I made for dinner. Specifically, something that I thought both of the kids should not only tolerate eating but should butt dig. I made fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. My intention was to make an actual fried chicken by cutting one into assigned pieces and frying them, but I'd never cut a chicken up for frying before (I've always just baked them, because it's easier and less messy--and picking meat off a cooked bird is pretty simple), and I made a terrible mess of it. So I ended up with a bunch of strips and chunks of chicken that I ended up cutting off the mangled carcass--and, really, that was probably best since the kids are reliable chicken nugget eaters.

But when I presented it to them, they both turned up their noses and declared that they hated it.

We made the standard threat that they would go to bed without dinner if they didn't eat. This really upset Gabe, and he spent the next forty-five minutes slowly eating the mashed potatoes and corn (which had to be pretty awful towards the end as neither is very good cold), but he got to stay up until his normal bedtime for his troubles.

Norah, on the other hand . . . . After threatening to send her to bed early without dinner, she pretty much jumped out of her chair and said, "OK!" and cheerfully started getting ready for bed. We bathed her and dressed her and put her in bed, and she went to sleep without a hitch. But before she went to bed, we warned her that she was going to have to finish her dinner this morning or she wouldn't get breakfast.

So we pulled it out this morning for her breakfast. And she refused to eat it again. Moreover, this morning there was a Halloween Parade at Gabe's school. We were all going to go watch him walk main street in Walton and visit all the stores and businesses in the little town (three of them). Norah seemed excited about the prospect. So, when she refused to eat her food, I said, "If you don't eat, you're not going to the parade. We'll just have to stay home and mama can go with Gabe and watch."

She acted upset at the idea, but still refused to eat. I coaxed and cajoled and threatened for fifteen minutes while she sat in her chair and resolutely didn't eat. Finally, it was too late for us to go along to the parade and we told her that we'd be staying home.

She "Ahhhhh!"ed a bit, but then pretty much took it in stride and hasn't cared a bit since then.

In other words, we dropped two bombs on her, and she just crawled into her bunker and ate some canned beans (something she'd never eat) then came out when the smoke cleared and acted like nothing ever happened. Which worries me. As a three year old, having to go to bed early and not being able to see a bunch of people dressed in costumes walk in a row are about the height of punishments. There is pretty much nowhere left for us to go at this point. Hopefully we don't have to wait until high school to find something that she loves enough that taking it away will help steer her in the right direction. Though I would definitely be OK with it being a love of cooking. I'd be happy to turn over some of those responsibilities to someone else.