Breakfast

Squeaker drew her line in the sand and refuses to make, take, or eat lunch at school. And I don't care. Maybe I should. Maybe this is another one of her test to see if I am (in her words) "a good enough mom". But I just don't care. She is hardly starving herself and if she doesn't perform as well as she could in school because she doesn't want to fuel her brain, that is her choice.

Now she has decided that she will not eat breakfast either. That's a bit too much, in my opinion. She does not have an eating disorder (although she pretended to a few years ago and spent a couple months melodramatically telling people so). Her attitude is more like "You can't tell me what to do so s***w you." She likes to play the weary warrior in the mornings who spent all night tossing and turning (she doesn't have sleep problems but pretends she does and likes to tell her therapists and her psychiatrist so) who now must mope and heave great sighs and mistreat others because of her rough night and yell at me that she's just not hungry OKAY?

I don't care if she skips lunch but I DO care if she skips both breakfast and lunch only to overeat at dinnertime. She never refuses dinner and when I asked her why she skips other meals but wants seconds and thirds at dinner she said, "Because it tastes good." Ah, so she can eat when she is not hungry.

So here's the deal. Lunch or no lunch is up to her. Breakfast is required. If she chooses not to eat breakfast then I'm not going to fight her on it. She may be excused to go about her day. However, on those days she may not have any junk food, soda, or dessert. Even if it's a weekend, a birthday, or a holiday. It's not meant as a punishment, but I see no reason to give a green light on these things to a child who refuses to eat real food at mealtimes.

So on the first day of the new deal she scowled and poked at her breakfast for half an hour taking only a couple bites. Finally it got to be past time for her to finish getting ready for school so I told her she was excused, but remember no treats or dessert today. She yelled at me that she DID eat, before dumping a full bowl of oatmeal down the drain. No dice.

When it came around to dessert time in the evening (and it was birthday) she glared pointedly at me from across the room then moved closer to stare me down. Then she stood and leaned with both hands on the table hovering over me. Peaches asked if she was going to have any and she said snottily near my ear, "I don't think so because I SUPPOSEDLY didn't eat breakfast."

I asked her to please move away from me. She allegedly did so. Can't wait for this "I'm so weird I don't even eat" phase to end.