Do You Make Separate Meals For Your Kids?
Everywhere I go these days I see parenting advice. Don’t offer pacifiers, babies don’t really need them. Breastfeed rather than bottle feed. Give time outs in a certain way or else they won’t work. Don’t use training diapers for your potty training toddler. Don’t make separate meals for your child, serve them whatever the family is eating.
So much advice is contradictory that it is hard to wade through it all, hard to know what really works and what doesn’t. When 6 o’clock rolls around it sometimes seems as though clouds cover the sunny sky and a cold wind blows in. My happy toddler suddenly turns surly and combative.
On certain days I swear I can hear the music from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Dinnertime. There are a hundred reasons a child could be classified as a picky eater, maybe he is a supertaster, maybe he has food allergies and thinks the food will make him feel bad, maybe he is often overtired, or just scared of new things. My little guy is so active and busy that it is hard for him to stop whatever he is doing and sit down to eat. Now that he is older new foods are such an issue. But I feel it is important to serve healthful homemade meals that are full of veggies and good sources of nutrients.
How do I steer him away from the salt laden chicken nuggets and mystery meat hot dogs that seem to scratch at the freezer door?
Even my pediatrician said not to serve separate meals for the kids; she says they should eat what the family eats. And most nights I do take that approach. But I don’t enjoy sending my kid to bed hungry simply because he is going through a stubborn phase. Not to mention the lack of fun for the whole family when one member spends thirty minutes crying. Besides, I sometimes want to eat stinky cheese or kohlrabi or beans (I am the most saddened by his refusal of beans, sigh). So some nights I open the fridge and whip up a meal of pasta with butter and carrot sticks and a glass of milk. At least I know we’ll have a quiet evening with no starving 3am wake ups.
Well, I did take some advice on the matter. I did stop buying the junk. You won’t find chicken nuggets or conventional nitrate filled hotdogs in my fridge. If I am going to make separate meals sometimes to play the role of diplomat, at least I am going to do it on my terms. Maybe he will learn the art of negotiation from all this.
All through my pregnancies and into motherhood I have received countless bits of advice. Some has worked; some was way out of left field. The best thing I ever heard? “Never say never.” I have learned that parenthood goes hand in hand with flexibility. Because sometimes the last thing that you want to do is the only thing that works.
Christa O’Brien is a full time working mother of two who is trying to get her kids off processed food while trying to get them more intimately involved with the food they eat. The Table of Promise is her attempt to answer some of the questions she has about food and share her findings.
