(no subject)

[the_rck]

I slept badly last night. That meant I was kind of dragging this morning. Normally, I'd have taken a nap to compensate, but I had a 10:30 appointment on campus. That meant leaving the house at 9:30. All the sidewalks were icy because it thawed just enough over the weekend for everything to turn to slush. I was worried, as I went down the hill, that I'd slip and tumble to the bottom. I tried to walk where there was snow or where the ice was lumpy.

I saw a nutritionist. She thinks my diet is pretty good. I need more vegetables and to be careful about portion sizes. I also need to eliminate junk food snacks (more vegetables would be fine) and, apart from my morning coffee, drink only water or unsweetened tea. She surprised me by not being concerned about how I get my calcium. Nutritionists I've dealt with in the past have always been worried about that because I don't eat much dairy.

She strongly suggested that I get Cordelia more involved in cooking. She thinks it will give Cordelia a sense of the work that goes into it and an investment in what comes out. She also said that, in her experience, adolescents are more willing to talk if you're working on something in parallel, that is, both chopping vegetables or pulling weeds or something similar. I'll have to bear that in mind as a technique for dealing with Cordelia.

Comments

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

(If this was Facebook, I'd have pressed the "Like" button.) :)

[lady_songsmith]

Seconding the cooking. With your situation, you're missing one of the best tools for getting kids that age to talk: car trips to nowhere. Plopping an adolescent into the passenger seat and running a long series of mostly-pointless errands is usually a good way to induce talking. It's the lack of eye contact, really. Easier to talk to the air than the parent. So any old thing that keeps you focused on something other than her would probably help.

[the_rck]

Scott likes taking Cordelia with him to run errands. He can sometimes get her to talk that way. She's not old enough/big enough to sit in the passenger seat yet, but she's getting there.

I have bought a second apron in hopes that Cordelia will want to cook with me. Right now, she'd much rather use her iPad to talk to her school friends. I can't compete with that. Maybe if I suggest baking a cake...