lunch, and milk shakes for dinner. I’m not proud of it. But at least I’m not up all night with a kid or two with travel-related food poisoning!
Of course, the sugar-as-main-course meals stop when the tour ends, and balanced meals are routine again.
All of my kids have gone through phases of not liking vegetables,even if I prepare them. When I’d encourage them to eat a salad, my sons used to drown one sliver of cucumber in a cup of ranch dressing. I’ve seen my kids hide green beans under the edge of their plates or fill their mouths and then pretend to sneeze into napkins and throw them away. After eight children, I’m onto all of their tricks. Some of my kids will claim that they “ate a spinach salad” when all that really happened is the bacon bits and hard-boiled eggs got grazed off the top of it.
Even though I know the secrets of their disappearing tricks, I choose not to get into a power struggle with my kids, insisting that every vegetable be eaten. I have been invited to family dinners at the homes of friends and watched a dinner conversation be ruined by an upset child being forced to eat.
I’ve also known children who grew up with very restrictive parents who insisted on low-fat, no-sugar, and even no-dairy diets. I’ve noticed an interesting backlash, in that as soon as the kids have more independence, they tend to overindulge in everything that was restricted early in life. I also have to wonder if there is a correlation between our current culture and our pursuit of “healthy” eating, wherein we count every calorie and study every ingredient, and the rise in eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia among children. My mother’s motto when it came to our eating habits was “Everything in moderation.”
For the most part, I don’t overly stress about what my kids eat, especially since I don’t keep many unhealthy snack foods in the house. I found that if healthier food is just what’s around, instead of insisted upon, it’s usually tried and usually liked.Sugar snap peas, butternut squash, fresh chopped salsa, and edamame in the pods have produced a willing smile on all of their faces, though I’m careful to make sure they don’t see me noticing that they like them. Saturday, though, is the morning that my kids know they can have a big bowl of their favorite sugary cereal. School mornings it’s always oatmeal or eggs or a whole-grain cereal.
When Donny and I were young, we called broccoli “poisoned trees.” We dreaded eating it and made sure our mother noticed the severity of our dislike if she served it for any meal. We would sit at the table and chew the broccoli spears slowly, with exaggerated grimaces on our faces. Then we would pretend to choke and fall unconscious. I’m sure our mother found it all very amusing. While our older brothers could entertain any dinner guests by singing four-part harmony, I knew I could probably bring the curtain down with my dramatic paraphrasing of Shakespeare’s Juliet in her dying speech: “What’s here? Poison broccoli trees, I see, hath been his timeless end.” Our one saving grace was that it didn’t grow in the garden, so we didn’t have to suffer through it too often.
For my own kids, I did discover one clever way to prepare broccoli without even a whine being heard. Put your cooked broccoli into the blender and then mix it into the mashed potatoes! Most children will eat mashed potatoes. In the same way I did as a child, my kids find that a pale shade of green can be unusually funny.
Since I have to be away from home five nights a week to do our show at the Flamingo, I really cherish the times we canhave family dinners. If the older kids and my daughter-in-law, Claire, are in town and can join us, it’s the best night ever for me as a mother. I want us to all enjoy one another’s company as a family group and not have to focus on the food groups.
I appreciate that my mother knew, because of her own sensitive taste buds, that
Of course, the sugar-as-main-course meals stop when the tour ends, and balanced meals are routine again.
All of my kids have gone through phases of not liking vegetables,even if I prepare them. When I’d encourage them to eat a salad, my sons used to drown one sliver of cucumber in a cup of ranch dressing. I’ve seen my kids hide green beans under the edge of their plates or fill their mouths and then pretend to sneeze into napkins and throw them away. After eight children, I’m onto all of their tricks. Some of my kids will claim that they “ate a spinach salad” when all that really happened is the bacon bits and hard-boiled eggs got grazed off the top of it.
Even though I know the secrets of their disappearing tricks, I choose not to get into a power struggle with my kids, insisting that every vegetable be eaten. I have been invited to family dinners at the homes of friends and watched a dinner conversation be ruined by an upset child being forced to eat.
I’ve also known children who grew up with very restrictive parents who insisted on low-fat, no-sugar, and even no-dairy diets. I’ve noticed an interesting backlash, in that as soon as the kids have more independence, they tend to overindulge in everything that was restricted early in life. I also have to wonder if there is a correlation between our current culture and our pursuit of “healthy” eating, wherein we count every calorie and study every ingredient, and the rise in eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia among children. My mother’s motto when it came to our eating habits was “Everything in moderation.”
For the most part, I don’t overly stress about what my kids eat, especially since I don’t keep many unhealthy snack foods in the house. I found that if healthier food is just what’s around, instead of insisted upon, it’s usually tried and usually liked.Sugar snap peas, butternut squash, fresh chopped salsa, and edamame in the pods have produced a willing smile on all of their faces, though I’m careful to make sure they don’t see me noticing that they like them. Saturday, though, is the morning that my kids know they can have a big bowl of their favorite sugary cereal. School mornings it’s always oatmeal or eggs or a whole-grain cereal.
When Donny and I were young, we called broccoli “poisoned trees.” We dreaded eating it and made sure our mother noticed the severity of our dislike if she served it for any meal. We would sit at the table and chew the broccoli spears slowly, with exaggerated grimaces on our faces. Then we would pretend to choke and fall unconscious. I’m sure our mother found it all very amusing. While our older brothers could entertain any dinner guests by singing four-part harmony, I knew I could probably bring the curtain down with my dramatic paraphrasing of Shakespeare’s Juliet in her dying speech: “What’s here? Poison broccoli trees, I see, hath been his timeless end.” Our one saving grace was that it didn’t grow in the garden, so we didn’t have to suffer through it too often.
For my own kids, I did discover one clever way to prepare broccoli without even a whine being heard. Put your cooked broccoli into the blender and then mix it into the mashed potatoes! Most children will eat mashed potatoes. In the same way I did as a child, my kids find that a pale shade of green can be unusually funny.
Since I have to be away from home five nights a week to do our show at the Flamingo, I really cherish the times we canhave family dinners. If the older kids and my daughter-in-law, Claire, are in town and can join us, it’s the best night ever for me as a mother. I want us to all enjoy one another’s company as a family group and not have to focus on the food groups.
I appreciate that my mother knew, because of her own sensitive taste buds, that
Similar Books
