1 Mother 2 Another

Recently Maddie’s been rather
indifferent about food – and by “food” I mean
anything but dessert. There is absolutely no ennui in her attitude
towards sugar. But for regular meals, she’ll take all morning
to decide what she wants for breakfast – half a bowl of
cereal – then procrastinate for an hour over lunch, then eat
a decent dinner (perhaps because she doesn’t get to choose
that meal). This has left me saying, “What do you want for
lunch, Maddie?” over and over again, only getting an answer
from her right after I’ve sat down and put my feet up to eat
my own lunch.


So a few days ago, I finally said, “Maddie, if you do not
tell me what you want for lunch in the next five minutes, I will
not make anything for you. If you are hungry, you will need to
provide for yourself. Do you understand?”


“Yes, ma’am,” I heard from behind a book.


Okay then.

Fifteen minutes later as I was in the
midst of a very nice ham sandwich, Maddie said, “Ok, I guess
I’ll have a ham sandwich.”


I looked at my sandwich, containing the last two slices of ham. I
looked at her expectant puppy face, staring at my lunch. And I held
my ground.


“Maddie, it’s too late to have me make you anything.
It’s been much longer than five minutes and I will not be
fixing you any food until dinner.”


Maddie sat down . She stared at me in disbelief.


And then she crumpled into tears.


Maddie sobbed and sobbed, the heartbreaking cry of a child who has
just found out that her parents will not always be there for her.
Bewildered, wounded, she sobbed for twenty minutes. Maddie begged,
pleaded, cajoled, every verb she could employ. To her credit, she
never yelled or got nasty – just couldn’t believe Mommy
said “no”.


“But I don’t know how to make anything myself!
I’m just a kid! You know that!” she kept saying.


“Baby, if you want to make a lunch, I will happily talk you
through it. But I will not make it for you.”


The sobs eventually subsided and her stomach finally forced her to
acquiesce to my conditions. The following ten minutes sounded
something like this:


“Go to the cupboard and get out the bread.”


“I can’t see the bread!”


“It’s on the shelf right at eye-level, on the
right.”


“It’s stuck!”


“Use two hands to get it down.”


“Where’s everything else?”


“Open the refrigerator. Pull out the cheese drawer. Take out
the cheddar slices.”


“I can’t find them! They’re not in here!”


“Look through the drawer. Lift out the gouda and the parmesan
and you’ll see it.”


“Oh. There it is.”


And so on.


We talked through getting out the mayo and the ham, finding a
knife, spreading the mayo, placing the cheese and a piece of ham
donated from my sandwich – every single freakin’ step.
And the whole time, I stayed patient and encouraging.


Yes, I am patting myself on the back.


As Maddie continued to work on her sandwich, you could see her
attitude change from sullen to proud, reluctant to proprietary. I
instructed her on how I put on mustard, and she said, “I
prefer it this way – you always use too much on my
sandwich.”


Okay then.


Maddie finally cut her sandwich – with help from me –
and sat down to eat it, by then beaming from ear to ear with a
sense of accomplishment. And then when Daddy came into the room
after lunch Maddie said, feigned nonchalance oozing from her pores,
“Daddy, what did you have for lunch? I just made myself a
sandwich.”


I praised her loudly, encouraging her a lot and building her up.
Maddie had crossed another milestone on the road to
self-sufficiency and you could see how aware she was of what
she’d done, and how completely she’d forgiven me for
drawing that line. And two great things came out of this:


The next time I said, “You need to tell me in the next five
minutes or you’ll fix your own meal,” she answered
immediately. That was great.


But then yesterday, after she’d requested a smoothie for
lunch and I’d blended up several fruits and some almond milk
and she’d gulped it down, she got up, strolled towards the
cupboard, and got out the loaf of bread.


“I think,” she said casually, “that I’ll
make myself a sandwich. Just a half a sandwich. I’m still
feeling a bit hungry.” She smiled at me.


“I can do it myself. Don’t get up.”


Make a child a sandwich and she’ll eat for a meal. Teach her
to make her own sandwich, and you’ll get to sit down a lot
longer at lunch time. It’s a beautiful thing.