Monday, October 22, 2007

Too cunning for her own good

TLM is still having a hard time with the separation that comes with naptime. While she was eating lunch, I mentioned that once she finished we would do our books'n'naps routine. So she took a really long time to eat. Every time I started to take her food away, she'd go "no no no", and once I put it back she'd spoon a grain of rice into her mouth, trying to make lunch last as long as possible.

When I was in my early teens, there was a time when I would force down many, many bowlfuls of rice gruel for breakfast, refusing to stop until my stomach threatened to give it all back, all at once. I did this to avoid beginning work i.e. working in my mother's hot, steamy kitchen where she made Chinese goodies for the evil, exploitative locals willing to pay for them. Small wonder that I ended up with an eating disorder.

Anyway, not only is TLM about a decade younger than I was when I went down that particular track, but really it's not the sort of message I want her to learn. So I promised that today she would have her nap in the hammock, in the lounge - without the 20 minutes of howling in her room first - because I didn't want her making herself sick.

She's a smart girl, that one.

3 comments:

Lumpyheadsmom said...

Beware such brilliance.

Angela said...

Naptime is so hard. Gregory did not even take a nap today. It was crazy.
She sure knows how to put off her nap time too.

Violet said...

lumpyheadsmom: oh I'm already imagining her outsmarting me as a teen, preteen or even a preschooler...and there's nothing I can do about it!

angela:it's the overtired running around like a headless chicken part, after a non-nap, that's crazy, eh?