Happy New Year!!

LOL, let me try to explain.

They've only been living with us for 3-4 months now, not a very long time. So the girl is 15 and the boy 14 (the younger ones are still with their mother).

Now unlike their British mother, I grew up with healthy food in Slovenia, always freshly cooked.

But here in Britain that skill has gotten lost for many and all they do is buy ready made food from Iceland (superstore), warm that up. Or she makes eggs in the microwave, or days on end pasta with tuna.

So all the kids would eat was either bland food from the store, full of sugar and no nutrients, or take-outs (order food in which is always fast food).

I don't know how much junk food they had in the previous household but I have a feeling they are enjoying the fact that there are "goodies" in the house. At the beginning I couldn't get them to eat anything but the ready meals, with the only exception when their dad cooked fresh steaks, they love their meat!

Pringles or certain crisps seem to be comfort food, definitely. It's lazy food and all the kids here in the UK love it and crave it because their parents don't really cook from scratch.

That's one part of the issue.

The second part is emotional intelligence. The kids still need to learn to handle their emotions and they need to learn to relax around us that we will never emotionally blackmail them (which is what they're used to from their mother).

So let's say, the girl comes down and has a wish.

She already is anxious to ask for anything really, afraid it will be denied her.

Afraid that she will only get something she desires IF she does something...

Her biggest fear is to be blamed for something.

So whenever I try to (gently) delay (not even deny) something she wants, if I have it of course at all, then she will flee into the old scenarios which were truly depressing.

Last time I tried to make a joke and said, she can have the Pringles, if she repeats ONE, just ONE Spanish sentence after me. (She needs to learn for Spanish, she will have an exam soon but is refusing it seems.) It was meant as encouragement, kind of a joke, but she stormed off to her room, sad as hell.

Woah! I had to go up, explain what I tried to do, ask her to cut me some slack, we are still getting to know each other, and definitely apologised.

On the other hand I need to be careful not to let her emotionally blackmail me just because she wants something... She's good at that too, she learned from the best I guess.

It's funny, both children fought hard to live with their father but now they are faced with the fact that they don't need those old emotional "tools" they learned.

Slowly but surely they are relaxing and learning new responses.

We have quicker success teaching my husband's 4-year-old son to manage his emotions and responses, despite seeing him only on weekends. LOL? Not really funny, I know.

So denying her Pringles for a moment, even though I have them, no matter what the reason, will be drama for many reasons. A bit spoiled, definitely learnt negative responses, emotional scars, huge impatience with anything, combined with fear... It's complicated I guess.

It takes a big amount of my own energy not to react to her big negative energy, figure out what's going on - and next time find a way to deliver my message a bit more carefully I suppose, explaining my reasoning before even saying she can have it later - because at the end of the day I know now that the kids actually like the fresh food I'm cooking and if I'm already cooking, of course I will want them to wait and not spoil their appetites with junk food.

Sorry, this was a longer answer than expected, right? :)

Sorry! Like everything, there is no easy answer, but I'm always happy to try to explain if someone is interested. Because it was a good question really.