Help! I need input from all you other wonderful parents out there...
Maia has started getting in the habit (sometimes) of pouring out her milk when she is done with her cereal. Sometimes she drinks it all, and wants seconds of both the cereal and the milk. Sometimes, she only wants the cereal and will say, "All done" if she doesn't want the milk that is left over. But SOMETIMES she pours it out and makes a mess.
Tonight, she did just that. (Yes, she had cereal for dinner tonight...) She poured out a lot of left over milk. I put her in timeout. When she was done with timeout, she wanted milk to drink...
What would you do?? Let her have milk (in a cup) because she asked for it and she's thirsty?
Say no way, you poured out your milk, so you obviously weren't thirsty 5 minutes ago or you would have drank that milk.
Or something else?? I did not give her more milk. I figured she got some with her cereal and won't dehydrate overnight (although I'm feeling guilty and afraid I should have given her some... kids don't ask for drinks if they aren't thirsty, right? SO maybe she's dying of thirst and I denied her a drink???)
HELP! I don't know what to do - and she's now in bed and I'm having a terrible time of it because of the guilt and not knowing if I did the right thing...and being so sad that I just did a terrible thing!
This is when parenting stinks and I don't enjoy it at all. The few minutes I got with Maia tonight stunk and the rest of my evening will too because now I won't even see her again until morning. Shoot.
7 comments:
I would have handled it the same way to be honest! I can't wait to see how others respond!
Ok here's me being blunt...are you having a hormonal day? Cause you sound like me when I worry about every little thing I do wrong in this game of parenting, when I have PMS!
There you are worrying about her dehydrating when she is sleeping peacefully!
I think you handled the situation just fine! She poured the milk so no more milk. Now maybe give her a sip of water if she needs it next time but stay firm about not pouring the milk out. On Maia's behalf- is there a pattern of her doing this? Like maybe she doesn't like the taste of the milk in a certain type of cereal? Just wondering...
You are a great Mommy to your kids so don't worry about this incident any more! Now.... can you help me keep Lindsay from climbing on top of my piano?????? See you don't have it soo bad!
Love ya!
Kim
Sounds like you handled it well! You're doing a great job....you obviously love this little peanut, and milk, or no milk, she knows that! Relax!! : )
Quaintance
Definitely no more milk if one of my kids did that. You are right, she didn't want it 5 minutes ago, so nope.
Parenting is no fun when we have to discipline but you are raising a beautiful little girl who will be very well adjusted to life. If you give her everything she wants, another problem will arise. :)
I agree. I think you handled the situation just fine!
On one hand I would say, "Don't beat yourself up," but on the other hand, I'd be thinking the same thing, and I know that advice is useless (and unwanted)! :-)
I would have done the same thing. The only thing I may have done is give her a sippy cup of water in her bed, but that's because Gigi HATES water. That way I am content knowing that if she just played me, she doesn't "win," but at the same time, if she truly is dying of thirst, she has fluids that she can resort to. That only works because she despises water. I don't know what I'd do if she liked water. Most likely do the exact same thing you did!
I really do believe in raising kids to be conscious of their decisions- bad actions have undesirable consequences. My two cents!
I wouldn't have given her anymore milk either. I might have given him a cup of water if I thought he was really thirsty. I have to do that when he asks for his 10,000th cup of juice because I know there is no way he is really thirsty, he just likes the juice.
What I do with Dmitrii is give him a bowl of cereal with no milk and then give him his milk in a cup. He likes the cereal just fine dry and this way he actually drinks the milk.
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