For those who need support parenting.

Here's the backstory. two days ago we sat down to potroast and veggies for dinner. We don't have it very often and to me it's a special meal. Everyone was eating just fine when Ella decided that she couldn't (ok wouldn't) eat anymore. It would have been ok if she had eaten more than 1 bite. Now, we've been struggling a lot lately to get her to eat and with her ballet performance coming up, she's dancing a few hours each day. She needs food to keep up. She's eating a small carb breakfast, giving away her lunch, and then refusing dinner (while asking for candy). I do not blame her ballet because NONE of them are like this.
Johnny decided that she wasn't getting up from the table til she had eaten something. I left to go out while Johnny put them to bed, and as the story goes, he went to put zoe/ada in the bath when the fight began. Ella threw her plate of food across the floor.
Now, the child better be glad that I wasn't home, but Johnny took care of it as well as he thought fit. After a lot of tears and discipline, Johnny called me saying she felt SUPERBAD and she wasn't allowed TV for the rest of the week and sent to bed. Hmmmm.... real bad? well, since she dances every day but tuesday this week, I'm going to up the anty.
She came home yesterday from school and I told her nothing with a screen. No TV, no computer, no video games. And we've had some scary vans in the neighborhood so no roaming looking for friends.
I love Ella. She would rather be bored than think about the problem. My child IS strongwilled. I dont know who she thinks she might be punishing by just sitting in one spot for EVER, but something she needs to deal with. I tried to help her, she said she'd rather complain about how she's just sitting there doing nothing... ok.
After she got angry pointing out "if I had known that my punishment was going to be so bad, I would have eaten" I told her to remember that for dinner. She was great for the rest of the evening, she helped out, and listened, and used her manners.
Then Round 2. We sat down with spaghetti and bread. she knew ahead of time what she had to eat. I warned her before she ate her bread that if she ate her bread and then claimed to not be hungry so she didn't have to eat dinner, that we would repeat last night so to think carefully if she'd be able to eat it all, and maybe eat her pasta first. She said ok and seemed to be doing ok.
Til johnny got home. I told him the situation before I had to leave, and I heard as I left "I'm not hungry anymore"... ooch. Johnny said after a couple hours of battling, he said, "you know I felt bad for your yesterday. You really seemed sorry and crying, and I expected you to not lie to me anymore" Her response: "I never said i wouldn't lie to you again. It's your problem that you believed that, and I'll do it again"

pause for dramatic thought affect. She wrote mean notes on her door and wouldn't talk to johnny, and for the first time woke up with the grudge still. I tried to talk to her, but you could hear the bitterness in her talking. How painful. for all of us. And this reminds me of what I was teaching on Sunday to the youth group.
Ephesians 2: 1-8"
" As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and Satan... gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following it's desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
" but because of his great love for us , God , who is rich in mercy made us alive with christ even when we were dead in transgressions-it is by grace you have been saved... [he did this] in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by woks, so that no one can boast"
Sometimes I think I'm so good and i have always made great decisions and what is right, but even a 7 year old can be sinful. As a 30 year old I am SO dirty with the pains i've caused others (transgressions) and the pains I've caused God (sins) that I really am by nature an object of wrath, and shouldn't be allowed out into the general public.
THank you God for your grace when I don't want to share it. I pray that Ella sees one day your incomparable riches of your grace expressed in kindness. Until then, I'll try to remember what you've done for me and act accordingly because the next verse says
" For we are God's workmanship, created in christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do"... chapter 1 reminds me that you fulfill all things in every way, so whether I "fail" or not, your plan will be accomplished, but i'm hoping to be a help.

So remember parents: we can be down on our kids, we can be down on ourselves, but there is redemption for every person: WHOLLY.