I dread dinner time. The bite by bite negotiations, the time out threats to “stay in your seat”, the lack of nutrition in my three-year-old’s diet, all support my insecurities as a mother. Even if the day has gone great, if we read books, walked in the fresh air, learned to share—everything crumbles at dinner time. We are all hungry, we are all tired and it is perhaps the largest transition of the day. My husband, god-love-him, has come home from work, nap time is over and the sun is going down on all the fun outside.
Before I had kids I would have never thought I would bribe my child with dessert to eat just three more bites. Please baby, three. I subscribed to the belief that a child will not starve and will eventually eat the nutritious and homemade food I would place before him every evening.
Ha.
First off, I seem to be struggling with the cooking part. I am not pouring love into carefully balanced four food groups on the plate. I am grouchily and hurriedly putting together what I think will be the easiest to make, eat, and clean up. And now I know my son is a real strong willed human being who truly might famish rather than eat vegetables. This reality check has led me to rethink my stance on the starve-him-out theory.
Some of my need to feed is maternal. Like all the other animal mothers out there, I am biologically driven to sustain my offspring. I now understand those crazy aunts and mothers who exclaim over how skinny everyone is as they dish up mountains of casserole. It is their love language, how they shower affection and hope into their families. But there is also a purely selfish side to feeding my son. When he is hungry, he can be a monster. He cries, he screams, he kicks. These behaviors are as unacceptable as the idea of watching him starve.
He has always been a picky eater. As a newborn he preferred left breast to right. Around his first birthday he would only eat orange foods—carrots, sweet peas, etc. Now he tries to convince us that he should only eat ice cream and the occasional hardboiled egg (just the white part, mind you.)
My mother has taken his finicky diet to heart. Super-grammy that she is, she sneaks healthy food into snack-like items and sells it to him as dessert. The bright red beet and meat balls where my favorite. They looked like chunky cherries. She is currently collecting all of her camouflaged nutrition recipes into a book called Undercover Carrots and Sneaky Peas. We are holding out hope that her deceptive dinners alone will grow him to a place of reason.
I know some day this will all be a fuzzy memory of horrible dinnertime tantrums. I know that someday I will have the opposite problem of teenage sons eating more that I can imagine. I see it already in my youngest boy. He has yet to get teeth but manages to eat half of his brother’s dinner while our attention is on the three golden bites. Perhaps as he grows his brother will be forced to eat, simply out of competition. Who knows? All I am sure of is that until my oldest turns the corner I will be there, fork in hand, food sliced up into the perfect sized bites, crusts cut off. What can I do? I am tired, desperate, and love him beyond reason—I am a mommy.
elke govertsen, mamalode publisher
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i hear ya, girl!
Oh Grrrl – we are right there with you. I think my three-year old is copying your boys
Thank goodness I know my dinner table negotiations are not singular to me. Tell Grammy to get that cook book together already – I’ve run out of idea w/ the “sweet red bells” that sold your boys and my girl 
Molls
I need to get my husband to read this. Having my own slew of food-struggles, I am not at all at ease about addressing my son’s eating, not eating, pickiness, not-pickiness, underweight, overweight, any which where it’s gonna go. The one thing I feel sure of is that stressing out over it is going to create more issues, rather than fewer. yet a relaxed attitude toward food (other than the relaxed feeling I get from, say, a gooey grilled cheese) is not within me. I’m faking it when I tell my husband not to worry so much.
Thanks for the post-
-Grace