As I’ve mentioned before (regularly throughout this blog), my daughter needs a routine to thrive.
We are now in the doldrums of the summer holidays. We’ve done all the obvious things (beach, parks, museums—though to be honest, most of that was her grandparents while I cowered in a darkened room trying to catch up on sleep). We’ve also hammered the local holiday clubs at the gym (to be fair, she now practically qualifies as auxiliary staff, and the bench in booth 31 is moulded to my backside). We even earned our sticker for attending six times in a month—by August 7th.
Every evening we’d bring her home and brace ourselves for the inevitable meltdown, all sparked by one simple question:
“What would you like for dinner?”
Cue screaming, crying, and a full-on fists-to-the-floor, out-of-control breakdown. Every. Single. Night. It was exhausting. More often than not, she went to bed hungry because, once she calmed down, all she had the energy for was peanut butter. Not on anything—just straight from the tub with a spoon. That, or snacks raided from the cupboard of shame.
I can hear you asking, “Why give her the choice at all?” The answer is simple: if I put food in front of her that she wasn’t interested in, she wouldn’t just refuse it—she’d refuse to eat anything else as well. It’s all very well saying, “She’ll eat when she’s hungry.” No. This child will survive on air, spite, and stubbornness just to prove a point.
I’m slightly ashamed at how long it took us to stumble upon the solution—well, my husband did. His idea was simple: a rota of meals, like the one she gets for school lunch. Of course. Obvious, really.
So now every day has three options: one for hungry, one for peckish, and one for not hungry. None of these are set in stone—if she fancies something else and we have it in stock, that’s fine. But I always make sure these meals are available. That way, if she doesn’t have the spoons to decide, we can point her at the list and she can just assess how hungry she is (something I can’t do for her).
We explained the idea to her, and she took to it like a duck to water (or like a fae child craving routine). In fact, she demanded to see the list before I’d even finished writing it! She now consults it every morning and muses over her options. Sometimes we edge her toward alternatives if we don’t have something or to make the choice more nutritious—but it works. No more meltdowns.
A few things to note:
The colour coding shows how long the meals take to cook. Red = up to 30 minutes (forever, if you’re a hungry seven-year-old). Yellow = up to 15 minutes. Green = no cooking at all (basically, “here—have a banana”). The pictures help her recognise what she’s being offered.
It took far too long to get the rota onto one page and printed (with the invaluable help of grandparents, who probably think we’re a little potty at this point). But since then? Not a single tantrum.
Still… I can’t wait for school term to start again.
Raising the Modern Fae 