Putting the ball in her court

Works-for-Me WednesdayPoppy felt much better after her brief battle with pneumonia last week, but she still had to finish out the full 10 days of her antibiotics. She’s a rather stubborn child, and it took a lot of cajoling and crying to get her to take the medicine — until I let her take a little responsibility for it. One morning I got exasperated with her and said, “Fine. I’m going to set the timer for 5 minutes. If you haven’t taken the medicine by then I’m going to have to hold you down and pour it in.” Maybe not the most diplomatic or tender-hearted parenting, but it worked! She took the medicine, and she’s taken it the same way since (sans threats from her mother) with a minimum of complaining. Today, in fact, she took it with no complaining at all.

Tomorrow is the last day of the antibiotics, but I’m planning to continue to give her ownership of her issues. Now I just need to figure out how to make this work for the anti-fruits/veggies problem!

8 thoughts on “Putting the ball in her court”

  1. The last time Wendy had to be on antibiotics, she told me, “I don’t want THAT medicine – it’s not delicious!” I followed up her antibiotics with her normal dose of Zyrtec – which she loves – and it was all good.
    .-= Jeni´s last blog ..Easter…three weeks late =-.

  2. Go you! Everytime you mention the anti-veggies, I think of Theo Huxtable trying to get Rudy to eat her veggies. There’s some story about a vegetable family…it’s pretty funny!

  3. Thanks for stopping by my blog! I love your post here…I use my timer for EVERYTHING!!! Quiet time, chores, computer time, the list goes on!!!

  4. I’m willing to be that if you held Poppy down and tried to force blended fruit/veggies down her throat, she would vomit all over you.

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