Monday, August 07, 2006

Is it wrong to bribe your child?

We are trying to introduce healthy foods to Tanner & Morgan. This usually means that each meal consists of a fruit and a vegetable. Tanner & Morgan have never been good about eating vegetables, and it's actually deteriorated since they were infants. What they have come to adore is sweets...ice cream, M&Ms, and one of their favorites, cookies.

Tonight, after they had polished off their grapes and at least tasted their meatballs, they were refusing to touch their vegetables. I finally told them that if they ate a piece of brocolli, they could have a cookie. I even went and got the cookies and laid them on the table.

At first, this didn't work. So, I called Daddy in, explained to him that if he ate a piece of brocolli he could have a cookie. Daddy preformed well - and that prompted Morgan to grab the whole piece of brocolli and shove it in her mouth.

She chewed and chewed....went bleck with her tongue...and then chewed about another 73 times. She started to retch, but then Daddy & I started cheering her on. At this point, she slowly swallowed down the brocolli bit by bit...and polished it off with some chocolate milk.

All of that pain and suffering for a cookie...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If bribing your children to get them to do what I want is wrong, then I am a very bad parent.

And so is my Dad. I learned from the king of bribery.

Laurie said...

Man. I love broccoli. But it's not getting ANTHONY to eat his vegetables that's a struggle in my house. It's getting MARK to eat his veggies. And of course, the boy mimics his father's every move...so even though Anthony likes vegetables, he refuses to eat them if they're not on Mark's plate.

Bribery is what being a mother (and wife) is all about! :)