Hayden, Who did you call?!

When Hayden was little and started eating solid foods there really wasn't anything he wouldn't eat. If you put it in front of him he pretty much ate it. As he has gotten older he has gotten pickier about what he will and will not eat. And lately it seems unless it is a hot dog or macaroni and cheese he automatically doesn't like whatever it is. There was a period of time when you asked him what he wanted to eat he would look at you and say, "Can we just go out," as if he was the one who actually had to make the meal.

With our busy lives, I have tried to make a point of sitting down to dinner every night as a family at the dinner table. Many times Hayden will say, "I'm not hungry" because he wants to keep playing or watching TV or something, and I explain to him that not only is dinner a time to eat, but it is time for the family to sit down together and talk.

I myself am not a very good cook. I make a few passable things. Dave on the other hand is a very good cook. He makes incredible meals and sometimes spends lots of time putting them together. In our nearly thirteen years of marriage I can count on one hand the number of meals he has made that were a dud. So there really isn't anything for Hayden to be whining about regarding the food he is being fed on a regular basis.

So needless to say getting him to eat at dinner time has not been a real treat. He would rather not eat at dinner and than eat crap like fruit snacks, popcorn or ice cream later. Even threats of no treats has really not detered him. Once when we had BBQ chicken (which Dave made and was excellent by the way) after everyone was done except Hayden, I cut two small pieces and told him unless he ate them he would get nothing else the rest of the night. Talk about dramatic, he took the most minuscule bite of one of the pieces and proceeded to chew and gag and chew and gag. It took him ten minutes to eat these two pieces of chicken bitching and moaning the whole time.

Well last night it came to a head. We had a chicken and pasta dish (which was very good) and Hayden refused to eat any of the chicken or the carrots in the dish. He really didn't eat anything. So we told him if he didn't eat there would be no popcorn later. He proceeded to bitch and moan and complain that if he ate his dinner his tummy would hurt. We explained that if his tummy would hurt by eating dinner it would really hurt eating crap later so he wouldn't get anything later. He then went into his I'm sick mode. I told him to got lay down in his bedroom. He wanted to lay down in the family room and watch his movie. Not wanting to reward bad behavior I said he could lay down in the family room, but I was not going to turn his movie on. He proceeded to whine and cry but went into the family room anyway. Dave, Turner and I continued with our meal and when we were done we began to clean up. I really wasn't paying attention to Hayden when all of a sudden he brings the telephone into the kitchen to me and says,"It's the emergency people." Now I hadn't heard the phone ring so I figured it was someone Hayden had called by accident. Nope, he had actually called "911" to complain that we were making him eat his dinner and not allowing him to have popcorn.

After I apologized profusely to the "911" operator and explained the situation, she informed me I needed to make my child more aware of what "911" was for and what a real emergency was. So much for that stupid little "911" book we've been reading.

So not only did we get a lesson for family home evening about what a real emergency is, we got a lesson on good and bad choices and good and bad consequences. And because of the bad choice of calling "911" Hayden had to go to be early without any popcorn.