the grass is always greener

Jonathan has starting wanting things simply because he is told that they are out of reach or off limits or belong to someone else. If he is anything like his momma he will be struggling against this defiant streak for the rest of his life. I am simultaneously amused and disturbed by the strength and consistency of this trend. Tonight, for instance, when it became clear that he was avoiding the carrots on his plate, carefully maneuvering around them to only eat pizza, I piled them all up in a neat pile on his plate and declared that that they were mine. I ate a bite or two and then commented again that they were Mommy's carrots. When I told him that they were "not for Jonathan", his response was immediate. He went from blithely stabbing at pieces of pizza with his fork to honing in on the carrots exclusively (and stabbing at me with his fork when I was in his way). He ate 4 or 5 chunks of carrot in a row before going back to his pizza and continued to give me the stink eye if I so much as made a move to eat one off of his plate.

While I am delighted to have found this bit of trickery, I am nervous about encouraging this unhealthy instinct by capitalizing on it. But it worked with beans and rice last night, carrots tonight, and sweet potatoes last week. And I'm pretty sure my parents used similar techniques with me. Hopefully I am not sowing the seeds of his therapy sessions 20 years from now.