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http://ift.tt/2yb5tNS:sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post “This morning we sent Farmbaby off with mother-in-law, her Nana, to…”
My mom has a McDonald’s blind spot too – somehow it’s become “their thing” because our kids don’t get a lot of fast food when grandparents aren’t around. (Which is not to claim that we keep their diets super-healthy; Costco pizza is OUR blind spot.) But Wal-Mart clearly has nothing to do with the child and everything to do with the adult. And who the hell feeds a dog from the table without express permission??
When I was little, Mom took me to McDonald’s multiple times in a week. My older sister was in nursery school in a half-day program, and it was too far for us to go home and come back. It was in a small town, there were not many establishments open for business full stop, let alone restaurants, and forget about a coffee shop.
So we’d sit in McDonald’s, and Mom would have a coffee, and I’d pick my way through a cheese danish. To this day I have favorable associations with the place. But I don’t like the food.
My mother has brought Farmbaby there once or twice. But she found that the food has changed and isn’t to her taste, and she felt that my sister probably didn’t want her to bring the kid there. She asked, and my sister said, well, if you have any choice, I’d prefer you didn’t. So Mom doesn’t take Farmbaby there anymore, unless it’s like, a road trip and there’s nowhere else. Fair enough.
Nana won’t eat the food at McDonald’s. She buys herself food elsewhere to eat, and sits there while Farmbaby eats. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what the fuck.
Here, McDonald’s is on a stretch of road between the small town where the farm is, and the small city where the farmer’s market is; a quarter-mile away, there’s a small diner that serves French fries that Farmbaby loves, and has waitresses who love her. There’s a bagel shop, there’s a second diner, there’s a convenience store that does great ice cream, then down in the city right by Farmbaby’s school there are literally a dozen affordable local-owned places– a bagel shop, a donut shop (artisianal donuts! i know!), a candy store, another bagel shop (we’re spoiled for choice), a diner, a coffee shop with good baked goods, a fried chicken place that’s phenomenal, a place that does sliders, a place that does quesadillas, a place that does just hot dogs, a food court place with seven restaurants in it that’s open every day (including halal, subs, soul food, Hawaiian food, burritos, crepes, I’m forgetting one)– I’m just saying, there are choices, and my sister’s friends own many of them.
There’s no reason to go to McD’s, and Nana explains that “well she pitches a fit because she wants it”– she would not know what it was if you had not made such a big fucking deal about it, woman!!
Ugh just this moment I overheard a great example of how a non-parent adult can help a parent reinforce consistent discipline. Farmbaby was coming in with her mother, and then said, “I want to go in through Veg Manager’s door.” (His apartment adjoins the house, and has a door fifteen feet or so from the main kitchen door. He has a great relationship with Farmbaby, because he’s been around most of her life, has no kids himself, and so treats her mostly the way he’d treat any other person, just understanding that she’s under three feet tall and doesn’t really know a lot of stuff yet. He even makes her special lunches when it’s his day to cook, just like he does for the one woman who works here who eats a high-protein diet, because he’s a nice and sensible dude and cares about people without being weird about it.) “No,” her mother said, “don’t walk through his house with your shoes on. Just come through our door.” “No, I want to go through his door!” “You can’t go in if he says no, honey, you have to ask him for permission.” So she asked him. “VM, can I come in through your door?” It’s a screen door, so he’d heard the whole exchange.
“Mmm,” he said thoughtfully, “no, I think you’d better go with your mother so your shoes wind up in the right place.”
“He said no, so you better come in this way,” my sister said, and Farmbaby pouted, but the logic was impeccable: VM said no, and he’s her friend, and she wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings. So she dragged herself up and into the kitchen door–
and forgot about the whole thing, and it was not an issue anymore, because the adults were consistent and fair, and the non-parent observed the interaction and behaved consistently.
Nana just undercuts and isn’t consistent, and oh my god she can’t stop confusing the dog, I’m getting really upset about that. Don’t feed people’s dogs! Don’t give them cookies! Don’t ask them to do treats they don’t know how to do!! She insists on doing “sit” and “shake”, and Dini knows those, so that’s ok, but then she wants her to shake with her other paw, and she was never taught how to do that and is a nine-year-old Labrador mix, she’s not going to pick it up easily, and somehow Nana just thinks she’s going to “get” it somehow?
Anyway. Farmbaby is unmanageably unruly (currently stampeding and shrieking upstairs, I’ve heard my sister start a loud three-count at least twice. You know the kind. “ONE! I MEAN IT! TWO! YOU’RE GONNA BE SORRY~~” Makes me cringe all the way down the stairs.
Oh my god she’s on two again, a third time. This isn’t going smoothly.)
Nana’s leaving Friday morning. Farmbaby’s gonna need a good long detox and some calm and consistent lack of excitement.
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