Rhett Ran Away!?!? Really???!?!?!?

Yes, dear sweet little Rhett is still his unique, "I will do what ever I please. Just try to stop me." self. I adore Rhett and the energy and spice he brings to the family. As many of you know he has huge eating issues. Since we moved here, I have been trying to get him to eat a tiny bit of what we are eating every night. It has been difficult but working and he has not even thrown any of it up...Yea!! The other night, a few days after arriving home from the weekend with his Dad where, wherever they ate, they had an abundance of french fries and fried chicken, Rhett decided that if he held out, I would not make him eat our food. He proceeded to tell me he would not eat it and there was nothing I could do about it. I told him he could write 50 lines stating that he would eat his dinner then and he responded with, " I will not eat green eggs... "oh wait he said, " I will not eat this and I will not write lines and you can't make me." In realizing he was right and feeling helpless, I asked him what he would do about it and he replied, " I will run away." I decided to call his bluff and said, " Well let me help you out the door.." and picked him up barefooted and put him outside the front door and locked it. ( His side of the story is that I threw him out. Maybe, I did.) I thought he would pound on the door and apologize, but he ran away instead. We gave him a little over an hour to return and he didn't. Travis went to friends houses looking for him but I ended up finding him loitering around the Wendy's drive through (bare footed mind you) seemingly looking as pathetic as he could so someone would give him some french fries. He saw me and bolted. We finally caught up to him and had a long talk about how I would be a bad mother if I did not make him eat normal food and how dangerous it is for him to be alone in the world.

The thing is that I was really upset that I did not know how to handle the situation to start with. My dear friend Jennifer said that her mom used to tell her and she tells her kids, " You are right, you can do whatever you want, but you can not choose the consequences." Simple and so very true. Now my question is how do you create consequences to fit the crime with a child who cares about so very little to begin with? I am working on it.