It was a weird day today, sd8 behaved fairly well, watched more tv than I would like but generally good. The trouble came when she was given breakfast, then dh and I work from home. She came in an hour after breakfast complaining she was still hungry. She’s in a growth spurt so this is kind of normal. Dh made her a snack. We go back to work. I make DH and I lunch, and ask sd if she wants any, about an hour after her snack. She says no. she’s not hungry. Half an hour later she is asking us to make her lunch. Dh says, no, you turned down lunch when it was offered and now we are working. She goes back to whatever she is doing but comes back not more than 15 minutes later asking for food. This repeats itself a few times, with DH getting mad about it. Dh finally tells her she will have to fix something herself, that she knows how to make, so she makes herself a frozen burrito at about 2 p.m. We are planning on eating at 5, but figure this is OK as she is so hungry lately she will want to eat again by then. We knock off work about 4:30 and make dinner together, and serve it at the table. She comes in and picks at her food saying she is not hungry. DH says we talked about this already and you will eat the dinner we made for you. She eats most of it, although she never finishes a whole plate EVER, which I can’t stand.. I am always scraping bits into the trash cause she is not required to clean her plate. Ergh. Anyway--tangent. We go out to the movies, and share a huge bucket of popcorn that she eats plenty of. On the way home, DH offers to stop at a fast food restaurant to get a final snack for her, and she says no, she is not hungry. He tells her OK, then I don’t want to hear before bed that you are hungry because now is when I am offering. She says she’s sure. We get home, she goes to bed pretty shortly after that. Then she calls out to her dad as he walks by the room, that she is hungry and can’t sleep. He tells her too bad, now it is time to sleep, not eat, and she is not going to get up and eat this late.

When this happens I am talking to my mom on the phone and she overhears DH telling SD she can’t get up and eat, so I tell her how the day went with SD wanting just to eat on her own schedule, not ours.
She says “makes you wonder who is in control here” Ohhh yeah. So true. Thank you mom for reminding me how actual parents operate. I know, a lot of you have read this and think we are terrible parents for leaving her to her own devices all day while we work, then taking her to the movies and feeding her junk food. I have no defense. We can’t pay for daycare and the movies were because this night is really cheap to go in our town, so we usually go today instead of the weekend. As for the junk food, we’ve been working on that, but it’s tough when DH thinks potatoes count as vegetables, and I don’t do most of the cooking. Dh & sd, and as far as I know bm all have this habit of eating a lot of fast food, which I always think is horrific. But as you may have seen, I am really struggling with my boundaries, and when I should say something, and when I should let it go. DH said something similar to me today… he said “sometimes you are the total evil stepmother wanting things to be perfect, and other times it’s like you’re not even a parent, and let her do anything at all.” (this was in reference to her putting a foot up on a payphone cubby and I didn’t stop her from doing it.)But I did nag her about putting her dishes away, using a fork at the table, and other parental stuff today.