Plan B 93clusion that Plan C is the equivalent of giving in. Actu-
ally, giving in is what happens when you start off using
Plan A and end up using Plan C because your child made
your life miserable. When you intentionally use Plan C,
you are proactively deciding to drop a given expectation,
either because you’ve decided it was unrealistic in the
first place or because you’ve got bigger fish to fry.
For example, one child was remarkably particular
about what foods he was willing to eat: certain cereals for
breakfast and pizza for dinner. His parents were quite
determined—as evidenced by their relentless badgering
and nagging (badgering and nagging, by the way, are half-
hearted forms of Plan A)—that he have a balanced diet but
weren’t able to shove lima beans down their son’s throat.
This example of reciprocal inflexibility led to at least two
explosions a day (at breakfast and dinner). Except in ex-
treme cases, such as bona fide eating disorders, issues asso-
ciated with diabetes, and so forth, a Plan C approach to
food is probably indicated with these picky-eating explo-
sive children. In other words, they won’t starve. And, in-
deed, this child wasn’t starving. “Eating a variety of foods”
was handled with Plan C, explosions over this issue were
eliminated, other more pressing issues were addressed, and
the food trigger was eventually addressed without aid of
Plan A. The child is now eating a somewhat wider variety
of foods, and he actually goes to the supermarket with his
mother to make his own selections.
Another child, Eduardo, routinely exploded whenever