Category: Can We Talk?

Do you use food as a reward for your kids?

Here is what the gals at Momversation had to say about this issue:

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Food has never been an issue at my house. Probably because food is simply a means to an end in my house – we don’t look forward to eating, we don’t eat out very often so we don’t put a social significance on eating and we don’t linger too long over meals – we eat and resume life. I don’t like to cook. The boys see and hear my attitude about food in general and they’ve grown up putting food on their list of things they simply have to do – nothing more, nothing less.

I raised my kids to eat when it was time to eat and if they didn’t eat when it was time, then they went without until the next meal. And we still have windows of opportunity when it’s acceptable to eat a meal and if they miss that window of opportunity, then too bad, they have to wait until the next meal.

Now when the boys were little, they ate snacks in the afternoon between lunch and dinner – I’m not that mean. However, I monitored what they ate and how much they ate so they would have enough appetite to eat when it was time to eat meals. Neither of them eats much between meals now, but GD is better about snacking and still eating a healthy portion at meals than MK is. MK … is whole other story. I don’t allow MK to eat very much between meals now because then he just picks at his food at meal times.

GD has always been a good eater. He rarely gave me any problems when it came to eating; he ate what I shoveled into his mouth and to this day, he’s not picky. In fact, GD can easily eat four or five meals a day and still be hungry.

But MK, wow. That kid and his food issues is a whole other story. I remember when MK was a baby and I would feed him any fruit or any vegetable and he would stubbornly hold that spoonful of food in his mouth for an hour. He would not swallow it. He didn’t spit it out, he simply held it in his mouth until I finally gave in, did I mention it would be a whole 60 minutes??, before he spit it back out.

Wow. Talk about a bitter pill for me to swallow given my controlling personality. But I finally got smart and mixed his fruits and veggies with other foods and fed him Pediasure, which he loved, but only the vanilla kind (he hates chocolate *gasp*).

Today, MK will eat his vegetables but only if I sit there and watch him and only if I give him an amount he’s expected to eat. He still won’t touch fruit, of any kind. He hates all of it. He’s such a strange kid when it comes to eating. His favorite foods are carbohydrates, like pasta – he would live on mac and cheese if I allowed him to. (And I suspect he will once he moves out).

I also raised my kids to eat what was served. I have always told them, and still tell them, I’m not their personal chef. But with that said, I won’t make my boys eat something they honestly can’t stand, except for MK because he can’t stand anything that isn’t pasta. But for example, GD. He doesn’t like sausage. So, if we’re having breakfast, for instance, and we’re having sausage, I’ll make him a couple strips of bacon instead. I will never, for example, make my boys eat liver and onions, if they don’t like liver and onions. (Remember that, mom? 🙂 )

At the same time, I found myself saying to the boys whenever they were about to eat something I personally didn’t like, “Oh, you won’t like that. It’s so gross.” Kevin would get so mad at me because hello! That was my opinion, they might have felt differently. So, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut when it came time to trying new foods so I wouldn’t influence the boys’ taste. As a result, they both love shrimp and I can’t stand it. (In fact, we’re having shrimp and rice tonight – well, the guys are, I’ll be cooking salmon for myself).

I have never used food as a reward or any sort of comfort substitution. When the boys were upset or needed comforting when they were little, I either picked them up, kissed their sweet cheeks and hugged them, or they hugged their blankies (MK) or sucked on a pacifier (GD), or I distracted them until they calmed down – I think giving food to kids as a reward or comfort item is bad, bad news. The kids then grow up to associate food with comfort and that usually leads to eating disorders. I think food should be treated as a necessary substance and nothing more.

I also don’t think children should be deprived of their favorite foods, either. As with anything, if you make it a bigger deal than it really is, then it becomes a bigger deal than it should be.

Case in point: I know a woman who used to allow her children to go trick-or-treating and then not allow her kids to eat any of their candy. Her rationale? Candy is not good for you. Candy will make you fat. Candy will make you sick to your stomach.

Well yeah, if you eat it all the time! But what about special occasions? I don’t buy a lot of candy for my boys, mainly because if it’s around the house, we’ll eat it. The same goes for soda. My boys simply don’t drink it very often because I don’t buy it. However, holidays and birthdays are different. They are more than welcome to eat all of the candy in their stockings or all of the candy from their trick-or-treating (they don’t do that anymore, but when they were little), or Easter baskets and savor the stomachaches that go along with it. I think it’s necessary to teach kids what will happen when they overindulge – it’s a lesson well learned.

Because I’ve been so relaxed on the candy/soda issue, my boys will often times have candy left over for months after a holiday because it’s simply not that big of a deal to them. It’s there to satisfy a sweet-tooth craving.

We also don’t eat dessert, either. I think the largest reason for this is because Kevin, nor MK, really like sweets that much. (This kills me, but it’s a blessing in disguise because I do and if we had dessert every night I’d be the size of my car – no joke). So we don’t have a “if you don’t eat your dinner you won’t get dessert” mentality because we don’t eat dessert.

I’ve always had trouble with people who have food issues, mainly because I don’t understand what those issues are; I can’t relate because food is not important to me. Again, food is simply a means to an end for me – I was brought up to think that and I’ve raised my boys to think that. To me, it’s as simple as “don’t buy it, don’t eat it” mentality. Though I understand that food is closely tied to emotional issues for many people.

As with anything, learning to control ourselves is really the key behind any food issue (or anything, really). The real challenge is to teach our kids the delicate balance between wanting it and then consuming it.

In other words: don’t deprive yourself, but know when to stop.

If you follow me on Twitter (and why wouldn’t you??), this is most likely old news. But I thought I would round up the interesting sites I have run across in the past couple of days because they’re worth mentioning again:

WHERE has this site been all my blogging life?? – Mother of All Conservatives. This blog is, as implied, a blog for conservative mothers, written by conservative mothers, and I love what I’ve been reading so far.

Stumbling across this blog has just reinforced the growing suspicion that I was hanging out with the wrong crowd. Duly noted.

Dale, my good buddy and pal from Write Anything, has taken on the GINORMOUS task of paying tribute to the 2,996 people who died in the September 11th attacks. It’s called Project 2,996 and here’s what it’s about:

Project 2,996 is an online initiative to get people to learn about–and remember–the victim’s of 9/11.

Choose one of the names from the list, research it, learn about the person, and post a tribute to your blog, website, or where ever, so others can learn about that person.

But most important, it’s a way to remember their lives and not the terrible, public way they were taken from us.

I participated and paid tribute to one of the fallen 2,996 one year and it was an … emotional experience for me. I was even visited by the gentleman’s family where they thanked me for taking the time to remember their son.

I firmly believe that we should continue talking about, and remembering, what happened on September 11th – both to honor the memory of those that died that day, and to ensure that we never allow this sort of attack on American soil again.

So please, spread Project 2996 around and let’s see if we can’t remember each and every victim once again on September 11, 2009.

Going to BlogHer? I found a fun new blog called Hot by BlogHer and it’s all about helping you get in shape for the big conference.

Want to join in? Then start now by thinking about what you want to do to be your best – be hot – by BlogHer. Maybe you want to lose some weight, or just tone up to look great in short sleeves and a cute cocktail dress. Maybe you want more self-esteem so you aren’t overcome by debilitating shyness around your fellow bloggers. Whether your goal is external, internal or both, I’m hoping you’ll find motivation and support here.

Starting next week (March 16), I’ll have a weekly challenge available for you. Each week will have a fitness challenge, a diet challenge, and a personal challenge. Pick one and do your best to complete the challenge that week. At the end of the week, report in here and tell everyone how you did.

You’re more than welcome to join in, even if you’re not going to BlogHer – it’s all about forming a support group to help get in shape for summer. And that is definitely one of my goals!

Speaking of summer …

I hopped over to Old Navy the other day (as in online, what, you think I’d actually set foot in the store?! Puhlease, ya’ll know me better than that! *grin*) and I ended up buying these two summer tops:

Cute, right?

Well, I received the tanks yesterday and when I tried them all, I loved them both right away. The only thing is, I’m going to have to have a tan before wearing them because they do a pretty good job of washing me out right now. But I was planning on starting the whole tanning bed routine next month …

But here’s the thing, I don’t know what sort of bra to wear with these. I mean, I don’t really have a problem with showing my bra straps, but I’d prefer not to. Other than a strapless bra (which are so uncomfortable, IMO), can you suggest another type of bra I could wear with these? I plan on wearing these on the cruise and it would be nice if I didn’t APPEAR to have come from hillbilly country, ya know? I have a strapless bra, but I’d really like something with a little more support.

AND, even though I love these tanks, they aren’t something I normally wear so I’m a little (okay, a lot) self-conscious about the mustard one because WOW, cleavage! I never wear shirts that show cleavage because well, my girls are sort of hard to miss when I draw attention to them and it makes me really uncomfortable to have men pretend they aren’t looking at them. And the purple one? Makes me look pregnant but I love it because it hides my poochy belly and I’m thinking this will be a PLUS on the cruise because I could pig out and no one would be the wiser.

Hhmm … I think I’ll buy more of those, actually. 😀

*sigh* The things I do to shake things up in my marriage …

Anyway, I’m now on the lookout for some cute tops like these but with sleeves – I know, Old Navy has some BUT, I’m looking for tops that DON’T have the cap sleeves because hello?! Grandma arms here. Cap sleeves just make me look like a football player. Seriously, what design genius thought it was a good idea to make tops with cap sleeves? A. either a man, or B. a woman with no arm fat.

If you’ve seen some cute spring/summer clothes anywhere, please share!

See this button? I actually laughed out loud when I saw it (you know how you think people actually laugh out loud when you see the word “lol” but they aren’t really laughing out loud? I really did laugh out loud).

So, I followed it. And now I’m hooked on the Worthington Wire site. These are the types of sites I haunt because they have all of the interesting links going on. In fact, a lot of the links I put on Twitter come from sites like this.

I just spilled one of my secrets – proof-positive that I love you guys.

I’m trying to hurry up and finish this post so I can publish it BEFORE my head explodes. It was almost 80 degrees here the other day and now it’s in the low-30’s. My sinuses are complaining – loudly.

Proof positive that I’m a complete and total dweeb:

Trying to be cool here – FAIL.

You can see why my boys refuse to go any where with me.

(WHY does my thumb look so … purple?? Gross).

This, this, THIS is what I’m talking about!!!

I recently blogged the reasons why I wasn’t interested in attending a blogging conference like BlogHer, Blissdom, Mom 2.0 and any others I might have missed.

(And by the way, the comments on that post are closed not because I want to discourage comments, but because I have it set for all posts to close comments after 10 days to discourage spam).

And in case you don’t feel like clicking over and reading that post, I’ll sum it up: I’m not interested in spending money to attend seminars about selling my blog because I’m not interested in that aspect of blogging – I’m not interested in learning how to manipulate my readers, and if I want to learn more about the art of blogging, there are plenty of online articles about the subject that I can access, for free, I don’t need to attend a seminar to learn these things: I blog for me, my family and to make new friends. If I ever went to a function like that, I would want to spend my time getting to know other bloggers without the pressures of looking good for potential advertisers.

But that’s just me folks. Those my personal feelings on the matter. Go if you want. Have fun. Be jolly. Etc.

No, I’m more interested in doing what Pioneer Woman and McKMama are doing: hosting get-togethers with the sole purpose of meeting each other and having fun.

When I read Ree’s post today, I found myself smiling throughout the entire article. She opened her home to her readers, many of whom she hadn’t met before, just so she would have an opportunity to meet them and eat scrumptious food. (My kind of party!)

I love this. I LOVE this concept! And she’s hinted that she plans on doing more of these parties.

THAT’S what I’m talking about! An event where we just get together and have fun. We’re all there for a common purpose (because it just makes it easier to meet people if you’re not sitting around staring at each other and grappling for things to start a conversation with).

McKMama put together a winter cruise (called MckCruise! HA!) for next year and has invited her readers to join her!! How fun! Talk about a unique opportunity to hobnob with your readers and make lasting friendships.

I love this. What a great idea. I wish there was an organization out there that hosted this sort of shindig. Maybe a shindig for each region? So it would be easy to travel to? (HINTHINT: Midwest!!)

Anyway, I just wanted to pass on Ree’s post for today because she’s doing exactly what I was talking about in “My Reasons for Not Attending a Blogging Conference.”

You’re my hero, Ree. You truly are. Thank you for being so approachable. My goal is to be just like you when I grow up. *grin*

Octomom. We all have opinions concerning Nadya Suleman. And I’ll be honest, my very first thought after hearing her story was, “Is this woman insane?! What about those poor kids?! How can anyone be so selfish! So irresponsible! So clueless!”

But then I stopped and really thought about the situation and though my initial opinions still stand, I’d like to challenge myself in breaking this down even further and giving it a fair analysis.

To kind of set the mood for what I’m talking about, watch the Momversation video below:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

I agree with Heather – I think we need to be very careful in how we judge this woman’s decision to carry eight babies to term. True, her decision was probably not the wisest course of action; true, given she already has six children at home and can not afford to take care of them, she shouldn’t have made the decision to have the other embryos implanted; true, her decision to have the octuplets will ultimately be a burden on tax payers, and we can’t help but judge her because it was very irresponsible. BUT the bottom line is, it was her choice to go ahead with the pregnancy and she still has the right to decide what she wants to do with her body and her offspring.

This is the line that pro-choicers have a huge problem with – obtaining the right to tell people what they can and can not do with their lives and bodies. Because if we ultimately cross that line, then where does it stop? For example: a woman already has four kids and society suddenly decides that she has enough, she’s not allowed to have anymore and let’s say she becomes pregnant again? Does society then have the right to swoop in and take that baby away from her because she’s over her allotted limit that society set for her? If we give society the right to make our decisions for us in one area, then chances are, society will end up having the right to make our decisions for us in ALL areas.

And that’s simply unacceptable, on any level and regardless of one’s beliefs. If you disagree, then put yourself into the woman’s shoes highlighted in the above example. Would you be willing to give up your baby because you didn’t follow society’s rules, or you broke them accidentally (because these things happen, it’s life)?

But on the other hand, what about these children? Where are their rights to grow up in a normal, secure environment? Where is their right to obtain the individualized attention necessary to build healthy personalities? And who is going to stand up for them and give them those rights? Especially when a few of the children have special needs? One woman can not possibly have the time, or the energy, to properly give these children what they need, it’s physically impossible. So … where can she get the help?

From society. From churches. From volunteers. From good samaritans. From government programs. Which are funded by taxpayers. So, in essence, WE will ultimately end up paying for Suleman’s selfish need to fill the void she has claimed she has in her life. She has WILLINGLY and KNOWINGLY become a burden on society.

And yet, she hadn’t expected this to happen. Granted, she probably shouldn’t have put herself in this situation, given she already has six children, BUT she had other embryos available and she felt they had the right to life. Imagine her surprise when she found out all of them fertilized. How could she terminate her own children? Could you? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to. It must be incredibly difficult to be put into a position where you get to decide who lives and who dies – I just can’t imagine what that must be like. It’s one thing to terminate a pregnancy because of a violent act, like rape, because the act was a violation, unwanted and certainly unplanned, but quite another situation to terminate a pregnancy when it was intentional!

And yet (see? I’m trying so hard to be fair here), someone is going to have to pay for these children. Miss Suleman is simply not in a position to do so, and will most likely not EVER be in a position to do so, unless she wins the lottery or something, WE will end up paying for these children through social programs.

Granted, social programs exist for situations like this – for unplanned (though technically, this was planned and something Suleman should have taken into consideration before making the decision to have the embryos implanted but that’s rather a moot point now, isn’t it), dire straits. I do not have any problem putting my money into social programs WHEN the people who use them NEED them, and use them as a springboard to get out of their dire strait and back into an independent livelihood. I DO have a problem with social programs when people are not only capable of getting out of their situation but CHOOSE not to!

And I think that’s why a lot of people are upset with Suleman, because realistically, she will never be in a situation where she can AFFORD these children on her own. Where does that leave her and her children? At the mercy of taxpayers – who are already buckling under the current economic situation as is. THAT is what angers people about this situation, we’re being forced to pay for this woman’s selfish actions, we simply do not have a choice, Suleman has not given us a choice and is taking advantage of the system in order to get what she wants. She chose to forfeit her personal responsibility so she could fill that void.

And while we’re on the subject of taxes, this statement from the video really angered me:

“Most of us aren’t thinking about where our money is going, are we?”

Precisely. Because people have been brainwashed into thinking that the government is simply going to take that money and why fight it? Grr. THAT’S how the government gets away with taking nearly 50% of our money from us because it’s a gradual process – a little this week, a bit more next week and OH look at the money I get back in April! Wooee! Which is peanuts compared to the money that was taken away from us, and put into programs for irresponsible people like Suleman, to begin with.

But this isn’t about taxes, it’s about Octomom (though ultimately, taxes is a by-product of Octomom).

Look, I’m not defending what she did. All I’m saying is, her situation? Is not as cut and dried as a lot of people think it is. There are a lot of moral and ethical issues here that simply can’t be tossed out because we’re shocked and repulsed by what she did. I certainly don’t have any answers.

One thing I can do though? Is pray those 14 children are cared for – one way or another.

Thanks for the thought-provoking topic, Momversation. I enjoy rational, articulate discussions like these. They challenge me to not be so quick to judge people or their situations.

Life is such a pretty shade of gray, isn’t it? 🙂