Someone Has to Keep Those Kraft Workers Employed….

I feel you judging me.

You foodie mommies out there who grow your own organic gardens and who have toddlers who eat quiche for breakfast and their nutrient-rich green veggies at dinner.

You pack extravagant lunches for your kids that you made from scratch the night before and at dinner  they plow through their spaghetti made with squash and mashed zucchini.

Then you look over at my kids lunch and you silently (or not so silently) judge my parenting skills.

Well BRING IT ON.

Do you think I haven’t TRIED to cook my children something new and different.  Do you think I refuse to serve them anything else and and thereby am stunting their growth and probably dooming them to a life of menial labour as their poorly fed brains cannot handle anything else?  Ya, I thought so.

Okay, maybe your not as judgemental as I think you are.  Maybe it is mostly my own embarrassment at my children’s eating habits that leads me to be maybe slightly a little bit defensive.  Truth is, I know many great moms who are also ‘foodies’ and who’s kids sit and much on cucumbers while mine eat their cookies.  But there are those out there who, for some reason, feel that it is their duty to show me the error of my ways and how ‘easy’ it would be to make the switch to healthier food for my little ones.

Which leads me to a few questions.

Have you ever tried to serve, day after day, week after week, different and exciting, time consuming meals to a group of children who will fight, scream and otherwise flat out refuse to eat it?  Every.  Single.  Time.

Even more frustrating is when my dh is away and I am serving these meals knowing full well that I am the only one who is going to eat it.

And there is the agonizing decision – how long do you let your children go without eating a single thing before you just let them have the food they want?

Have you ever reached the end of the day and realized that the only thing you saw your child eat that day was a couple Goldfish crackers at snack time, that you distinctly remember throwing out or putting away the entire contents of every other meal you served them?

Have you ever stared at the vitamin aisle at the grocery store looking at the ‘Children’s Multivitamin for Picky Eaters’ and wished there was one that said ‘Multivitamin for Kids who Don’t Eat Anything and Probably Will Refuse to Take This Vitamin’?  

It’s Simple Math

To add to my frustration – my kids have never reached up to the bottom end of a growth chart.  They are small.  My youngest, who will be 3 in a month, still meets the weight requirement of an infant car seat.  My 8 year old would still be using a 5 point harness car-seat (and would continue to until probably Jr. high) had it not been for the age cutoff.    This is not new or shocking.  I am barely over 5 feet tall.  My children are little.  They are not ill, they are not disabled, they were just made small.  Maybe they will have a growth spurt one day.  I’m still waiting for mine.  Their size is a whole other blog post I am sure you will one day read.  But to keep focused on one mommy rant at a time:

Take one part small child and add one part non-eater and you get one parent who is judged for every food choice she makes.

You serve KD how often??  You are having grilled cheese again??  All you put in her lunch is some fishy crackers, a bear paw, and a muffin??????

That’s right.  Because I have tried to make different things.  I have tried every possible concoction and lunch option, sent it off to school and have then seen it all come back at home at 3 o’clock.  I will not throw out an entire lunch at the end of every school day just so you don’t judge me!

I’ve even tried messing with the KD.  I’ve gone through at least a dozen recipes to make it homemade.  I’ve tried substituting the whole wheat pasta we use for all our other meals.  I’ve tried using real cheese instead of the powdered stuff.  I’ve tried adding meat, adding veggies… it’s amounted to a lot of wasted food.

I serve at dinner time different meals on a constant basis.  I try to include something I know they might eat, but it gets more and more tiring to start each meal with ‘I don’t like this’ and end it with screaming kids in a corner because they refuse to try what’s on their plate.  Dinner time is something we dread.  It’s not fun or happy, it’s loud, it’s grumpy and it usually ends with at least one child in trouble.

http://dlcollicott.wordpress.com/category/devotional-thoughts/

So yup, we eat a lot of KD.  Or at least they do.  And grilled cheese.  Toaster waffles. Sandwiches with Peanut Butter and Nutella.   Recently, chicken nuggets have been the new victory.  That’s right, I am excited that they will eat processed battered chicken pieces doused in a sugary sweet and sour sauce.  

http://girlmeetsstove.blogspot.ca/2010/09/day-one.html

And you can judge me all you want.  Go ahead, tell me how you started your kids as babies so they will eat anything.  Tell me how you have a ‘try everything’ policy and your kids always eat what’s on their plate.  Tell me about your organic veggie garden that your kids eat from and the exotic ethnic meals they request for birthday dinners.

Truth is, it’s like this:  we took my oldest swimming from the time he was a few weeks old.  Every week we had him at the pool, playing and splashing happily.  Then when he was about 2, he flipped.  He hated the water.  He was paranoid and would cry and scream even when he took a bath.  To this day at 8 years old will become slightly hysterical if you try and take him in water above his knees.

Some kids just don’t like the water.

And some kids just won’t eat. 

And anyone who has tried to force a small child to eat can tell you – it can’t be done.  We’ve tried rewards.  We’ve tried punishments.  We’ve tried making them sit there until they fall asleep and we’ve tried serving it for breakfast.  There have been sad moments of frustration where one of us has tried to shove the food into their mouths.  These aren’t proud moments.  They are sad histories of trial and error

We’ve dealt with deciding to be the ones who ‘give in’ or deciding to be the ones who let them ‘starve’.   We’ve been given a LOT of advice, some good, some bad, most of it unsolicited.  There is still no answer.  There has been no magical solution to get them to eat.  It is just what it is.  A frustrating, less than inspiring, not in the manual time of parenting.

Light at the End of the Starving Child

In grade 3, my oldest is now starting to try new things.  Meal time for him is no longer an experience that leaves us both in tears.  And so I have hope for the other 2.  Give them a while, they might grow out of this phase.

Until then, I might as well take up stock in Kraft.  Did you know they have Kraft Dinner Crackers now???  I hear they might be made with REAL CHEESE!

Sigh.

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