The Cranky Continuum

This week has been a very difficult one. A-chan was sick in the early part, I have been sick yesterday and today. Since neither of us was feeling well there was a large crankiness continuum that descended on wednesday.

It started with one of my pet peeves: food issues. I am not quite sure why, but whenever a problem comes up between A-chan and myself it usually involves food. Food seems to be a major issue for me, one that I didn't have a clue about until A-chan became old enough to eat solids. Requiring the consumption of all the food on one's plate is not anything that I ask of my toddler. (When my stepmother would require this I never could understand it, specially since she was a proper southern lady who heaped and I do mean heaped PILES of food on our plates that some adults couldn't even get through. Thus I am disinclined from this particular stipulation for my child!) However, I do ask that she eat in a timely manner. Eating lunch for over an hour but still having taken only 5 bites is a huge irritation for me. Particularly when I have spent all that time asking her politely over and over to eat just a little bit and she ignores me...then when I finally ask if she is done and she says yes...so I take away her plate and then she goes bonkers into a crying screaming tantrum about the food going away.

I simply am incapable of understanding this behaviour and it's driving all of us nuts. Spending my time at the lunch or dinner table cajoling A-chan into eating something is frustrating, but the tantrums are the worst part. So on wednesday there was an altercation following this pattern and when she screamed at me for taking away her food, I yelled back. I absolutely hate the fact that I yelled at her. And when she had a bad dream last night about "got in trouble at lunch and mata yelled at me" I felt really horrible, low down, awful and like the worst mother ever.

But I hope that her bad dream might help remind me in future that while I might not be feeling good, I might be very frustrated with her, she might be completely irrational about how and when and why she eats her food - I shouldn't yell at her because I love her so much and there is nothing worth yelling at her. It's really difficult to get over this strange thing I have about her eating habits. I wish that I knew where it came from in the first place. I'm beginning to think that it's the hardest part of being a parent (at least for me), particularly because it's not something that I ever had problems with before becoming a parent so how do I deal with it and make it go away?