Wasteful, Entitled, and Inconsiderate

I was so ready to jump on Facebook and ask my fellow unschoolers how to deal with my child and what’s happening in our house around food. I was already writing the post in my head:

“We’ve done a lot of deschooling and releasing of control around food in my house lately. We no longer require everyone to sit at the table and eat dinner at a certain time, my daughter often makes her own plate, she eats when she wants, and snacks all day. Full disclosure: we are still working through that one. But nevertheless, we have come a long way.

But lately, she makes a plate and then only eats half of it. Or she opens a snack, and then only eats certain bites of it. It takes her forever to eat and often she puts it in the refrigerator. So we end up with a whole bunch of containers with half-eaten servings. And then she wants to eat sweets all the time. It’s driving me mad.”

I had gotten upset with her. She had asked for some of my food. I’d given it to her and she didn’t eat it. She put it in the microwave and then 30 minutes later she asked for something different – a chocolate-covered granola bar. More sweets.

I felt like she was being wasteful – we buy something or she chooses to eat something and then if she doesn’t like it, it has to go to waste. It felt entitled – as though everything needed to be her exact brand or she wouldn’t eat it. It felt inconsiderate – the pantry is not infinite and it’s not always going to be stocked with your favorites. Sometimes it might not be stocked at all. What you see is what you get. I told her she needed to get this food thing together.

Running errands by myself gave me some time to think about the situation. I didn’t like the way I handled that. I wasn’t in a space of listening and I definitely reverted back to a coercive parenting style. Get it together is not very empathetic.

I started to think about how both my and my partner’s relationship with food has changed over this time we’ve been in a pandemic. There are times when I don’t want to eat anything. I’m over it. I’m tired of the food we have and I’m often over the food we get at restaurants. I eat but not many things hit me in my happy place. Sometimes I don’t want to eat anything. And of course I crave things like carbs and sugar because that’s a human reaction when we are stressed. It’s a way of self-medicating.

So…why wouldn’t she be experiencing the same things??

And then that list: wasteful, entitled, inconsiderate. How many times have I been told, or read between the lines and felt that I was being wasteful, entitled, or inconsiderate? Was I a kid that wasn’t given space to have the same type of feelings that adults have? What parts of myself needed healing or reparenting?

But Maleika…that’s what kids do – eat junk. That’s why you have to make them eat properly. Some folks will say, well, since they ain’t putting nothing on this food bill, they are gonna have to eat what I got. And both of those perspectives are true. It is my responsibility, as a parent who has a longer-term vision than a child, to help her learn to take care of her body and to help her understand that being in a community means that not everything will be to your liking.

I think the approach is the difference. I think it’s more fruitful, loving, and supportive to focus on helping her with building good mental and physical health practices. Better ways to cope with uncertainty and anxiety will lead to better eating habits. I also need to make sure I am modeling those things for her because she’s learning by watching me. We can talk about hypocritical parenting another day…remind me.

More to come…always.