SHUT UP!!!

You do not know how to make my kid eat. The fact is, I can count on one hand how many time she's eaten what I've served her in the past year, and every year before that, for as long as she's been alive. It's not the same as the issues you occasionally have with your kids. This is a battle I have been fighting for seven, nearly eight, years now, and your cliche advice, straight out of the Captain Obvious handbook is NOT what I need.

No, eating dessert in front of her won't do any good. You know how I know? Because I've done it before, about 100 times. How enjoyable is it for you when every time you eat something good, you have to listen to a crying kid the entire time? Yeah, didn't think so....

No, telling her that if she ate her dinner, she would get some of whatever it is she wants won't do any good either. I've only done that every night since she was 3.

No, giving her the same meal back time and time again until it's moldy won't do any good either. Again, how do I know? I've done it.

No, it won't work to make her sit there in front of her food until she eats it. How do I know? Come on, you know this by now.

And HELL NO I won't buy her Pediasure. That's what she WANTS us to do. For one, have you seen the cost of that stuff? It's like $1 a bottle, and she'd be drinking it 3x a day probably. I'm NOT in essence paying my kid close to $100 a month to eat for shit, and letting her live on supplement drinks that taste like milkshakes. Sure, she probably would grow a lot more, but hey, if she wants to stunt herself by refusing to eat even when perfectly good food is placed in front of her at regular intervals, at this point, it sounds like a personal problem to me.

So just stop it. Seriously, your kid's refusal to eat broccoli is not on a par with my kid's refusal to eat basically everything that isn't crap for as long as she's been alive. Just stop it. I don't want your advice. Even our pediatrician doesn't have any miracle cure for it. What makes you think you do? Just stop it. Shut the fuck up already.

I also don't appreciate the comments about how "after a couple times, they learn". Yeah? How about after a couple hundred times, when they still haven't learned? The fact is, Thak and I have done everything "right" with her. We've been very consistent, very clear, and taken the hard right over the easy wrong every single time. She still turned out like this. It's not our fault. We didn't do this.

She has not been an easy one to raise. She's never eaten well. She was hard to get off the bottle and pacifier. She was an absolute nightmare to potty train and wasn't even 50% trained at night until halfway through Kindergarten. She defies nearly everything we tell her. Oh, and have you ever tried to get a learning disabled kid with an attitude through their homework? Let's just say that's an experience I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, but I do it ALL THE TIME. So parents of normal children, shut up. You have no clue what it's like to raise Erin. It's not fun, and your cliche bullshit doesn't work. (I understand why you think it does, though. That stuff works great on Orren. That's why we have no problems at all with him.) Maybe someday, you'll have a kid who's not so textbook, and then people can give you the stupidest, most unsolicited, Captain Obvious advice known to man. Then you can be sorry for doing it to me all the time.