On food intolerance and nagging

Here's an update since my whine about my oldest son. I mentioned he seemed to sniff and clear his throat a lot. He would eat a lot of oranges and grapefuit every night, but had mentioned that he didn't want to eat them any more because they were making him feel sick. So I stopped buying them and, guess what, after a few days he seemed to have lost the sniffles. However they came back, and now I suspect tomatoes. He eats a lot of canned tomatoes and commercial salsa and I think a couple of weeks of not eating them will do him good. Maybe we can reintroduce them later on and see if he notices any effect.

I did get a heavy tome out of the library on food allergy and intolerance, but it didn't really help. I was hoping to be able to look up a food and its likely symptoms, but of course everyone has a different reaction to different foods.

I made a decision yesterday that I would try to keep my mouth shut around my dear son if it was something I'd said before. In other words, if I had something new to say, fine, but if it was another nagging session about how he should be getting more exercise or whatever, then zip it, mum!

My friend Amanda told me that she had tried a new way of doing things. If a mess was bothering her, she would clear it up rather than nag her son to do it. She felt a lot better. At the time, I responded that I would feel resentful either way. If I nag L to clear up the food mess around his computer, I feel resentful that he doesn't do it immediately, if at all. If I do it, I feel resentful that I feel like a maid! Lose lose for me.

However yesterday I was washing dishes and decided that while the water was hot I would go downstairs and get any plates or whatever from the computer room and quietly (without being a martyr) remove them and wash them. I felt good - I knew that the dishes were all clean, there wasn't a smelly pile of stuff downstairs, and I didn't have to nag L to do it. That wasn't so hard. Thanks Amanda!