Friday’s Fostering Blog
Fed up with seeing the deluge of Easter eggs and Easter chocolate bunnies etc. we have decided to let the girls have a little chocolate for desert after dinner time each day in a bid to lighten the load. One of our family rules is that we have a good go at our meal before we start desert.
Eating has always been an issue for Alice. She uses food as a means to control. When she was first placed with us over 4 1/2 years ago we thought that she had issues with eating. She used to store food under her tongue or in her cheeks, she used to regurgitate food or make herself vomit. She had a very limited diet consisting mainly of carbohydrates. What we have noticed over the past few years is her levels of control. She will eat certain foods for certain people at certain times and not for others at other times. It can be very wearing when one day she will eat something quite happily and the next time she will go into meltdown over the same food. This means that quite often she does not get as far as the desert part of a meal.
It has felt really sad to not see her enjoy her Easter chocolate along with Lauren and Annie. Charlie and I decided that instead of giving it for desert we would instead give it as an after school treat and before we asked how anyone’s day had gone. That way it would not be seen as a reward to give it, or as a punishment to withhold it. We just wanted to give it as a treat for no reason at all.
Charlie asked Alice to sit up at the table for a treat. As he got the chocolate Easter egg down and started to open it Alice lost control. She started screaming at him and said it wasn’t fair that he was opening it in front of her. He quickly explained that he was giving her some chocolate for a treat. It was too late she had already decided she wasn’t having any and put her head in her hands on the table.
Some days you feel like you just can’t win. You feel like the bad guy when you stick to the strong boundaries that have been set and you’re the bad guy when you try to get a treat and it is point blank refused. After a little reflection we wonder whether much clearer explanation might have helped. She obviously totally misread what was going on. Next time we will spell it out much clearer!!
A Less Ordinary Family Foster Care Blog
