Am I a bad Grandfather?

Today, my wife and I took our 6 year old grand-daughter Brooklyn to brunch at a Friendly's.

Brooklyn picked scrambled eggs for Breakfast. My wife Tina and I each gave her a little of our meat from our lunch platters. When she was less than halfway through, Brooklyn claimed she had a stomachache from eating the eggs. Tina said she could have her garlic bread to make an egg sandwich. Brooklyn put a small amount of egg between the two small pieces of bread and gobbled it down. She then had a stomachache again for the rest of the eggs. I told Brooklyn that she should not lie. “Do you have a stomachache or do you just not want to eat the eggs?” I asked. I told Brooklyn again that she should not lie. She admitted that had no stomachache, but just did not want anymore because she was not hungry.

Well, here is where the question comes in. Tina's meal came with a free ice cream sundae. She would normally have given it to Brooklyn, but I said not to because “If Brooklyn is too full for food, she can't be hungry for desert”. Tina did not want to eat the sundae. I had to coach her to eat it, and I explained that giving in to Brooklyn is going to be bad for her in the long run. Was I a bad grandfather to have Tina eat the sundae, with Brooklyn staring at Tina with a look of being unloved on her face?

When we babysit for Brooklyn (my wife actually babysits and I am mostly left out), they constantly have problems. My wife has to give her time-outs and yell and very rarely give her a tap on Brooklyn's bottom. When Tina was visiting her ailing mother in Brooklyn, NY a few weeks ago, I had Brooklyn for a day and a half and there were no problems, because Brooklyn know that when I say “no”, that is the final answer. I am the only one (of all her relatives including parents) that does not spoil her and she knows it, so we spent the whole time doing nice things together, rather than her testing me. I have never yelled or hit Brooklyn, but I tell her things in no uncertain terms. She knows exactly where she stands and then there is no battle of wills.

In my humble uneducated opinion, food issues and weight issues are either genetic or happen to people for far greater reasons than Grandpa not letting the grand kids eat a sundae.

Don't sweat the small stuff, Kids need to be loved and they know when they are but it has little to do with Sundaes and eggs.

You are a good Grandpa because you are involved in your grandchilds life in a positive fashion. We all make arbitrary rules then we use rational that seems to justify these rules, at least to ourselves. Whether your decision to not let the kid eat the sundae was right or wrong we will never know but I can tell you with certainty that your decision to take her with you to lunch and your attempt at teaching her a life lesson showed her you love her and she knows that. So you are a good Grandpa

Let me add some things to this story.

My wife is overweight. Her BMI is over 30.

I have a Lap-Band.

My son will be a candidate for a Lap-Band if he doesn't change his eating habits. His BMI is over 31 and rising.

Brooklyn's mother is overweight. Her BMI is over 30 and she yo-yo's about 60 pounds up and down continually

Her mother just had a gastric bypass.

Everyone in that family skips breakfast, and eats double or triple portions at dinner except Brooklyn. We went out to an Italian restaurant for Mother's day last year. My wife and I split one meal. My son order two meals. The two boys (that I call grand-children, but are really step-grandchildren, 20 and 13 at the time) each ordered dinners with double Entrees. Brooklyn was given a children's meal, but her mother not only ate her own meal, but 2/3's of Brooklyn's meal because they let Brooklyn eat the bread placed on the table at the beginning of ordering (bread is Brooklyn's favorite food), so Brooklyn wasn't hungry when her meal came.

Yes, I know that I am fighting a losing battle, but I will not give up.

Brooklyn does not like meat. We make sure she gets Protein when she is here with us.

I also make sure that Brooklyn understands (or will understand before long) that we, (grandma and grandpa) and her parents were children too. We show her pictures of ourselves as children and pictures of my son (her father) as a child. We continually reinforce the idea that we all started as babies. I make sure I tell her of mistakes that I made as a child and that her father made as a child so that she will understand that she can become “smart” as she grows up.

I try to teach her things about life. When she asks a question, I don't just answer yes or no, or because. I try to explain why and of course I try to bring it down to her level. My son says she is only 6, just like he said that she was only 5 or 4 or 3 as I have tried to teach her things throughout the years. I always try to make teaching playful and I believe that a child's mind can be stimulated by abstract ideas if the ideas are made less abstract by analogy to concrete ideas.

No, I do not teach her (my passion) politics, but I tried to explain to her why advertising can not be trusted on TV. TV advertising holds more weight with children than the word of their parents or the word of God. TV is the great teacher, but it can be the teacher of wrong just as easily (maybe be more easily), as the teacher of correct ideas. Regrettably TV has become Brooklyn's babysitter as it has become the babysitter and therefor the primary teacher of values to most of the children of the current and last generation. Whenever we go to visit my son's home, Brooklyn is either watching TV or on her computer (Windows XP, 2.6ghrz CPU, 80gb hard-drive). Yes, she has her own PC (shared with her brother).

I do not have children. I do, however, have years of experience working with children as either an aide or babysitter. This involves feeding children things like lunch. Now when I have worked with Autistic kids before the first meal we usually go over menus with the parents, how food is to be prepared, etc, do the nature of the beast. Sometimes you find kids that would rather be underweight than eat certain foods or food of certain colors, etc.

On working with kids who do not have such extreme food issues, I had a fairly simple rule. For lunch we would decide what to make. Then I would make them pick out one "health food". It could be a fruit or a vegetable. If it was a really picky day then maybe a lowfat yoghurt. But they had to pick out something and they had to eat it. It could be a salad. Or grapes. Or maybe some little carrots. Or an apricot. Whatever the kid wanted as long as it was available. No reason to make it be a bad healthy food. But as much as would get whining, I insisted. And the kids complied and of course the parents always backed me up because they liked that rule.

If we were making something like garlic bread as part of a meal and one kid didn't like herbs on it then we would leave herbs off of that part, etc. Or someone could add something after it was made.

I can be pretty picky myself- some of it relates to sensory issues (I just don't like the texture of certain foods or of things that are cooked or prepared a certain way. Like chicken. I really dislike chicken, mostly because of the texture. I don't care for the taste either. So I don't ever eat chicken), and sometimes I know from experinece I just don't like certain things. So I understand picky and I'm fine with working around it. As long as the kids ate balanced meals it was all good.

Its a rule I try to remember with myself and my husband when we cook. It can be really tempting to have meat and starch or even all starch or so forth and no "health" food. So I will find myself saying, "wait, where is our health food". And then we have double servings of it.

I also think consistency and boundaries are important. Even if it is "just this once". Because then the child wants every time to be just this once. And "last time you..." Or "that one time you let me..." When it comes to things like that kids have the memories of elephants.

It can be hard. Working with pre adolescant girls, when body weight and image and stuff would come up they got how being underweight was unhealthy and models were too skinny, etc. But I would always remind them that being overweight by a certain amount is also unhealthy. I would tell them I weighed too much and was trying to lose some weight to be more healthy, but that the best body is always the body you have.