To be a good parent you need to be a great manipulator. While office politics requires these skills and we often pride ourselves on being able to outwit our colleagues it can be a massive struggle to outwit a three-year-old. This is not to suggest that a three-year-old is our intellectual equal but it sure seems like that sometimes. One mother has found a new weapon in the war against our children. The particular battle she has focussed on is getting them to eat healthy food. This hack is so brilliant no child stands a chance.
It can be incredibly tough to make your child eat the right food. While you can disguise broccoli with some airplane noises it will only work for so long. As a child grows up they will start to figure out these approaches and point-blank refuse some foods. Recently Jane Stine, mother of a three-year-old battle-hardened genius noticed something. She was doing the weekly shop with her child and notice that everything her child wanted was branded. Her child wanted the Lion King yogurt, the Cars soda, the Frozen dishcloths. Whatever was branded the child would ask for. This is when Jane had an idea.
Jane left the store that day determined. She went to the local toy store and bought a large pack of Disney stickers. The next time they went shopping she was equipped for success. Now she was offering her child Frozen branded bananas, Toy story branded asparagus and The Lion King branded Brussel sprouts. It worked, the poor child never saw the trick coming and left very excited that she had gotten so many of her favorite things. Little did she know she has just lost crucial ground in the battle for supremacy between mother and child.
Jane shared her revelation online and it quickly went viral. To date, her post has over 100,000 shares and moms everywhere are stealing the idea to trick their own kids. Of course, there have been those other moms commenting too. They have noted how fortunate they feel that they don’t have to trick their child as they don’t have relationships with their children that are built on lies. This clearly misunderstands the whole point.
Jane is not actually trying to trick her child. There is no war with children that takes place. Of course, at times they can be frustrating but these moments we have with our children when they are at their youngest are the ones to treasure the most. Your child is only three once and you have to savor these moments. This little trick that Jane is playing on her child won’t work for long and probably won’t actually help her convince her child to eat the Brussel sprouts once they are cooked. However, if stores are allowed to use marketing to take advantage of Jane’s children and if they are allowed to use it for nefarious reasons, to make her child eat unhealthy snacks and buy garbage, then she can use it for good.
This little trick likely won’t last long and it is something to provide entertainment to her child during the mundane weekly shop. If her child finishes the weekly shop with ten stickers on her face and a massive smile, then that is parenting done very well.
These outside the box ways of thinking to make mundane activities more enjoyable for your child are fantastic. Don’t get bogged down too much in the right wrong argument or you will never get out of it. If your child is happy then you are doing the right thing.
