Eat it or Wear it!

It was not my finest moment as a parent, but all in all my actions and reactions on one evening about ten years ago can still shake one of my younger children (who were not even born at that time) into better listeners. In my minds eye I see us all back then. Two weary parents and one strong willed five year old who refused to eat a single bite of chicken noodle soup, never mind that it was something she had eaten dozens of times before, liked and she should have been hungry enough to want. In my own defense I had to have been tired, dealing with wacked out pregnancy hormones and after begging, cajoling, arranging deals that most other children would have jumped on, ("Just eat five bites of soup and we will call this over."), but it was all met with crossed arms and a defiant stare. We were losing her and I guess I must have imagined the soup as the proverbial line in the sand. I must have worried that if I allowed her to leave the table, I would be setting myself up for years of disobedience.

So after about an hour and a half of all of us sitting around what was now cold soup, I uttered five words that has become the stuff that family legends are made of.

"Eat it or wear it!"

I am certain that she thought my threat was hollow, but there is one thing she has since learned about me. It takes an awful lot to make me mad but once I have invested all of the energy it takes to get me there, I follow through!

The soup was dumped over her head.

Within minutes she was cleaned up and I apologized. Life went on. She and I both learned a few things about discipline and listening and most of all communication. I suspect that we are better off for it, but if I could reach back in time and change my actions, I would. I didn't need to dump the soup to make my point. When I think back about all of this I can see that my bullish behavior only taught her that bigger and stronger people always get what they want. All because I insisted that she eat something that she did not want. How absurd!

As I got older, I learned to pick my battles. She (and her sisters) might appear to get away with things on occasion, but only because I know that I am far more of an effective teacher when I am not nitpicking every little thing they do. And when I start to forget that I think about the soup.

Isn't disciplining our kids right up at the top of the list as one of the hardest jobs we face on a daily basis? The parenting books all cover it, but what they all fail to tell you is that it is always evolving as our families grow and change. Consistency is key, but so is balance and it is okay to make mistakes along the way, especially if we own up to them.

We teach our kids, but they are all here to teach us something back too. Sometimes those lessons include forgiving and accepting our own shortcomings.