Look, Anna, what I said exactly was,
'Some examples where negotiation would not be allowed in my house once the question had been posed [this means my child expresses her point of view] and I had explained my reasons for refusal [this means I say no]'
And I did give some very specific examples. You were implying that I never listen to my dds' point of view EVER alongside being 'brutal' and 'bossy' and all the rest of it.
All of this is just a big distraction anyway from the post where I said you were just a big hypocrite.
When you first came on this thread and said that all decisions in your family are consensual and by negotiation and that you never make your children do anything that they have not chosen to do or make decisions on their behalf I immediately assumed that you were either being dishonest or were very foolish. Of course, in the fullness of time you have shown yourself to be both.
Of course you make decisions on behalf of your child (like all parents) and you've given the examples of Atonement and foie gras to all or our -horror- amusement but then you have the gall to tell the rest of us that we shouldn't be making decisions on our dcs behalf even where these decisions are sensible, appopriate (and very often made with our dcs full understanding and approval). Why are you doing this?
To pretend that going to Atonement is all your dds' idea is absoutely stupid. And even if it were her idea (as if!) it is still you who were responsible for enacting this choice. You are the adult and she is the child.
To act as though our children should or do make their own choices in life is disenguous to the point of being disturbing.
Even where we make no choices for our children we have to take responsibility for this.
I could absolve myself of all guilt for the chips that dd1 had at lunchtime by saying they were all her idea but I recognize that I am the one in the position of responsibility. She is a child.