Surely you have mistaken me for someone who can be bullied.

In a forum, one that I frequent, one that I like, I posted a message. I posted a message that came from my heart, came from my knowledge and came from the desire for no other mother to ever have to experience what it is that I have experienced and because it wasn’t what one person wanted to hear she told me that she wished I would erase my post.

‘scuse me? Not gonna happen sunshine.

Let me tell you what my warning was;

Mothers were informing another mother that one skipped meal wouldn’t hurt her toddler.

I know different. One skipped meal hurt mine because mine is affected with MCADD deficiency. Only we didn’t know he had MCADD deficiency until the morning after one skipped meal.

It lurked in the shadows, like a trapped door spider, silent, motionless and invisible to the naked untrained eye and when the conditions were right it sprang from its hiding place to inflict hours of torture on an innocent little soul.
The morning after one skipped meal he was found in his crib, stiff, lifeless and barely breathing. I scooped up his little body, rigid and cold to the touch, I screamed out his name, for the neighbors, for God, for anyone to come and help me but I was left alone to do what I could for him until help arrived via 911.

She had the nerve to try and tell me that because a pediatrician would give the same advice that mine was invalid. I reminded her that doctors are human and fallible. As are hospitals, as are governments that do not test at birth for many hidden or what they call orphan diseases and syndromes. Actually the government is remiss, but it is done because it’s not “cost effective,” they however DO NOT give parents the option to have these tests run in absence of funding. Each test would cost approximately 20 dollars. If someone had told me, I would have gladly paid.

She told me I should erase my post because it is not what the mother needed to hear…

Pardon me for speaking my mind, but I happen to think it’s EXACTLY what a mother needs to hear to avoid potential heartache. I think it’s exactly what the world needs to know and if I can prevent even one tragedy with my voice then I will do it not because I want to raise havoc, but because I have seen what MCADD can do. I have seen that spider spring up out of nowhere. It’s big and it’s ugly and I would prefer to find a way to eradicate it from the earth, but I can’t do that so instead I will inform.

I don’t care if it hurts your sensibilities. I don’t care if it makes her nervous. I don’t care if it makes people angry to hear me say that one skipped meal can hurt a child. I know my truth and I will stand my ground and I will scream it from the roof tops and I will if I have to cut it into my chest and put it on display if it is going to save one child from what I had to watch my child go through. It is just too damned bad that I am standing in your face and calling an archaic teaching “myth.” It is a MYTH, I know it’s a MYTH, I have seen what listening to that MYTH will do. There is nothing that is good that can come from one skipped meal.

You do not send a child to bed without dinner to punish him; you do it so that you can feel like you are in control. You don’t give in to an insolent toddler, you are not letting him skip the meal because he is not hungry; you are letting him skip the meal because you are frustrated and angry that he will not eat what you’ve pain stakingly prepared for him instead of finding something else that he will eat. You are PARENT, he is CHILD, he will eat what is set before him and like it or he will eat nothing at all.
You are not winning a power struggle. Winning the power struggle would be in finding something that he will eat…its called compromise and more of us should find it.

Toddlers are programmed for survival; ancient survival. The ancients lived by a simple plan, sweet equaled safe, bitter equaled poison. They look for the sweet because the sweet is safe, they avoid the bitter because bitter is not. Bland is also good, spice is bad. Think on their level. It’s primitive thinking and it’s not that hard.

Stop thinking that your child is somehow trying to outsmart you. Stop thinking that your child is smart enough to know how to outsmart you and stop listening to people who need to prove their ability to be right so much that they will put an innocent life at risk to do so.

Erase my post?

Think again sweetheart…I don’t scare easily ….