11. MAKING YOUR CHILD DO THINGS IS LIKE 90% OF PARENTING
The moment that still sticks out in my mind and haunts me to this day happened ten years ago when I was working at a pediatric clinic. A father came in with a four-year-old child who had apparently never eaten solid food. He told me, “She just doesn’t like it so I never make her do it.”
I told him in a very serious and unequivocal way that four-year-olds absolutely need nutrition and not just the infant formula she was drinking.
She was very thin and lethargic and I was very worried. But the stupid dad just kept saying the whole time, “You don’t understand, I’m not starving her, she just doesn’t want to eat.” He became irate with me saying, “I don’t know why you’re trying to suggest I torture my daughter and force her to eat before she’s ready.”
I was honestly almost crying by the end of it because I felt so badly for the child. Apparently, the physician never got any further and we ended up having to report it to the authorities.
But I never heard the end of it due to confidentiality reasons. It just horrified me to think of an otherwise healthy four-year-old wasting away of malnutrition because her dad was too nervous to make his daughter do something.
CarlyLaura