At the Table...

Saturday September 10, 1994 Jasmine-9, Margret-7, Trina-4, Lark-2

Dear Reader, no doubt you will be frustrated with me. You will think of lots of better solutions, as I am too at this writing. Where was "The Kid Whisperer" or "Super Nanny" when I was raising my children?

I hear in my mind my sister saying, "When there's a power struggle, everyone loses."

p.s. You can tell I'm a library manager by the things I say. My poor kids.

"At dinner we each took a turn saying how we were the same as Lark or different than Lark. Jasmine said she was more daring than Lark. So we talked about "daring". We decided that actually both Lark AND Jasmine were daring--only in different ways.

Then Trina was tipping her chair. She ignored being asked to stop. I asked if we had a family rule about chair tipping.
"No," she said.
"YES!" said all her big sisters.
"Why?" I asked.
Then I lectured on Risk Management. Example:
"What do we do to reduce the risk of a house fire? bla bla bla.
Then I said,
"If we tip our chairs we risk smashed toes. Do you like having your toe smashed Trina?"
So then Trina talked about wearing shoes but still side stepped the chair issue.
Margret began playing the recorder and we reminded her that we had said yesterday she was welsome to play it outside. She ignored that and I whispered to Steve,
"See what I mean about power struggles?"
Then I asked Margret if she cares how I feel. She nodded. I said,
"It would make me happy if you would put the recorder away during dinner." And she did! Then she wanted a second helping of dessert.
"No."
"Okay. Can I have the rest of the pink lemonade?"
I asked if anyone else wanted some. They all did.
"There's not enough for everyone. Is it okay with everyone if Margret drinks the rest?"
"No."
"Okay. Can I have some milk?"
"Margret, if you'd eaten a helping of leftovers like the rest of us did you wouldn't be hungry now. There's a correlation to eating dinner and being satisfied."
In the end she got a glass of milk but so did everyone else.

I took the three older girls to City Rep's "The Prince of Peace" this evening."