Creating Kris ~ a young mom blogs…

- I do not feed my kids “crap”. Even with all our difficulties right now, we still provide nutricious food for Harmony. For example, last night I baked up a homemade quiche with cubed ham, onion, red pepper, celery, cheese (1/2 cheddar and 1/2 skim mozza) with no added salt. I frequently make homemade Shepherd’s pie with ground beef, veggies, & potatoes. Paul’s specialty in the past week have been Turkey Squares made with leftover turkey from the one he cooked on Thanksgiving Monday along with at least 5 different vegetables. He often makes fish and was the one to get this family eating it at all (ditto for whole wheat bread).

- The stuff she often asks to buy for her lunches fits my definition of “crap”. Her last request list included: Cheetos, spiderman gummies, fruit gushers, cookies, Toxic Waste candies, fruit rollups, and brownies.

- Every day, Harmony’s lunch includes a meat, a fruit, a vegetable, a bread, and a milk product. More often than not, she chooses milk to drink. Besides which, why would sending water to drink be unhealthy?! Many schools are recommending more water be sent these days (at the kids’ previous school, they *had* to be sent with water in kindergarten for snack, never juice or milk).

- In the fridge, there are about a dozen fruits and veggies to choose from. We have apples, green grapes, a peach, kiwis, plums, bananas, tomato, celery, onion, green pepper, red pepper, baby carrots, and might have some cucumber left unless she’s already eaten it all. She has LOTS of choices and the only problem we encounter is her pickiness (of all those veggies, she might only like one or two).

- Harmony has the opportunity to pack her own lunch and to add reasonable grocery items to the family grocery list. I made her a lunch=packing guide years ago she knows to follow. When she refuses to pack her own lunch, I pack it while still meeting those requirements. Today she refused to eat her cheese because she doesn’t “like” it and didn’t eat any of her green pepper.

- When she was younger and asking for Lunchables (which contain massive amounts of sodium!), we started letting her bring her own self-made lunchables so we could monitor what went into them.

- I don’t agree with force-feeding kids, or feeding them by hand after they aren’t babies anymore. Obviously Harmony realizes that she controls the food she consumed and makes it a power struggle issue for herself.

- Harmony’s chores are not very complicated or very many in number nd actually before we moved to this house she barely had to do anything at all. These days, besides her own care (showers, her own laundry), she is asked to clear and sometimes to set the table. She takes care of the dishwasher. Sometimes I ask her for help with other chores like tidying and vaccuuming. We actually really *need* her help since moving to this house with my insurance benefits being cut off (including the paying for housekeeping service) because we literally don’t have the ability to do it all. If you have complaints about your granddaughter doing too much work, I suggest you call up State Farm insurance and ask for the claims advisor to tell them that their wrongful termination is hurting the Cormier family.

- The general trend of “indulging” children that was popular in the 1980s is no longer the prescribed method of child-rearing. I would know since I’ve been getting and reading parenting magazines since Harmony was a baby, attending parenting conferences and training, talking to other moms at playgroups and events, and researching parenting methods online. Oh yah and that 4 year degree that includes child psych courses and content.

- Harmony plays into what your genertation believes about parenting & gets pampered as a result. We could be raising her like this but she would learn next to nothing about real life. She would grow up thinking there would always be someone there to clean up her messes. She would grow up being rude and disrespectful to her elders, and would lose friends and jobs and other opportunities. If she’s old enough at nearly 11 to put up a sign in her room that says I hate my parents, she’s smart enough to make ammends for her awful behaviour.

- A loss of priviliges is NOT “punishment”. If you’d like to know the full definition of punishment, I can lend you one of my text books Behavioural Psych – punishment is *adding* a new unpleasant stimuli such as an aggravating sound or physical pain. If I told Harmony she would get 20 lashes with a belt for each swear word, that’s a punishment.

- Similarly, a loss of dessert is not “depriving” a child, nor is it a punishment. We’ve explained to Harmony time and time again that sweets have a place in a balanced diet where lots of other food is being eaten from all the food groups. It does not belong in an unbalanced diet of extreme pickiness. For example, Avery eats pretty much all his breakfasts, lunches, suppers, and snacks. Desserts comprise maybe 5% of his overall diet. If Harmony skips breakfast 2 days of the week and refuses 3 lunches and 1 dinner, and then gets sent off to you where she gets dessert frequently, it then comprises an unhealthily large proportion of her overall food intake (30%?).

- We don’t punish here. We enforce consequences and allow the kids to experience natural consequences (which means not jumping in to rescue them if they are doing something the wrong way). Barring safety concerns and anything that would have a long-term consequences, we allow them to learn from their mistakes.

Also:
- When someone calls then immediately calls again when no one picks up, I assume it’s an emergency.
- Just like many people of your generation are not “techie people”, I’m not a “phone person”. I hate talking on the phone. When the person I’m talking to degrades me and insults my family, that becomes even more applicable. Just trying to follow the convuled logic is exhausting and frustrating.
- Being angry and upset often leads to tears, which almost always leads to an existing headache getting worse or a new headache to be brought on.
- You keep talking about how “normal families” do this and that. We’re not in normal family mode right now!!! Every single movement causes me extreme pain – beyond what I felt even recovering from C-section surgery while caring for newborn babies! I can hardly walk, I’m a zombie compared to my previous gifted level of high mental capacity and intellect functioning. And right now there’s not much hope things will improve beyond getting somewhat more adequate pain management, so I’m obviously not feeling very optimistic or hopeful either.

- Harmony’s currently personality is so rude and uncaring I often wonder who’s child she is because I’ve always been so empathetic towards people. She literally tells me “why don’t you go around!” or “why don’t you do it!” even when she knows this is difficult (like when I’m navigating my wheelchair around the kitchen) or painful (like when I’m cleaning up all the messes).
- Harmony can unfortunately be manipulative. She turns on her “baby” voice and acts very cute and innocent to some people (grandparents, her doctor, the psychologist we took her to previously).
- Harmony has difficulty discerning what’s real vs. what she imagines is real. She implies and assumes incorrectly.
- Harmony is already a “good” liar. Whehter done on purpose (”I didn’t sneak an extra granola bar from the cupboard”) or just by stretching the truth (”I have 3 dead sisters”), what comes out of her mouth can’t be trusted at this point in time. Right now she’s constructed this Cinderella fairytale in her head with the big bad Stepdad who abuses her. I can assure you he does NOT and if he did take actions that actually fit the definition of “abuse”, I’d be doing somrthing about that so it didn’t continue. Instead, we give her many many chances and choices to do what needs doing and as a last resort if she’s acting like a toddler she may get treated like a toddler.

That’s all I can think of for now. I’m exhausted enough by dealing with Harmony, I don’t appreciate having to become further exhausted trying to make her biological grandparents understand our household’s rules and systems. I’ve been really generous over the years with allowing you access to her so she could develop a relationship with that side of the family, and yet you’ve continued to undermine our parenting techniques, especially once Paul came on the scene. Yes, he is more strict than I was, but he’s her *parent* now, more so than Chris who doesn’t even take on a father role i the limited time he does spend with her each year! Paul wants Harmony to grow up and be a good person, a responsible citizen, a caring adult. We’re not just raising a child, we’re guiding the development of a personality.

I’ve passed your message along to Harmony. I asked her if she would terminate her chore “strike” but she informed me petulantly that she hasn’t decided yet. Here’s a picture of what the eating area looked like the last time she was “on strike” – I assure you it’s actually much worse this time around and there’s actually no space left on the counter and we’re out of bowls. We were hoping she would be done in time to be able to go to basketball on Saturday so being done in time to gain phone privileges may not be possible. I’ve let her know you’re waiting for her call.