Custard's Last Stand
By Martha Wharton
In two decades of parenting I've learned to choose my fights. Hairstyles, for example, are not worth hand-to-hand combat. A purple Mohawk is fine with me. Maybe that's why my children opted for the nice-kid-on-the-block look- green dreadlocks didn't raise a proper stink at home. Being savvy souls, they saved their energies for other campaigns.
Like the dinner table.
While they were still in high chairs I made an all-time Big Mistake: I started bargaining over food. "Offer a healthy selection and let them eat what they want," the pediatrician advised. "I haven't lost a toddler to starvation in years." Easy for a doctor to say. I counted out the peas. "Just three more and you can get down," I cajoled.
The battle was joined.
By second grade my son had me well in hand, and his sister was showing championship form. I could use one hand to count meals they'd both eat - and have fingers left over. What made one child's mouth water made the other one retch. Tuna casserole brought him scurrying to the table, but sent her to her room with a queasy stomach. The apple-sauce-cottage cheese combination she adored left him feeling faint..
Somewhere around fourth grade our son branched out and risked pizza at a sleepover. We thought we had rounded a corner. Our hopes evaporated a month later when he gagged on a lima bean. His sister, adopting a diversionary tactic, ate only white things: skinless chicken breast, rice, potatoes, cottage cheese, cream of wheat.
Sometime during this period I bought blue plates.
Like a misguided zealot, I fought on.
I withheld desserts. I negotiated: "You don't have to eat the bun, just finish the meat." I combed cookbooks and grocery aisles for nutritious white foods that did not contain "stuff." The choices were limited at best. We ate a lot of fish-pulverized to get the bones out. And a lot of fettucine alfredo-without alfredo.
Not until these kids were almost into high school did I figure out they were running a scam. "Why let Mom off easy when she's so much fun to set up? You take the tuna stuff and I'll hold out for plain spaghetti."
Once I stopped caring what my children ate, they began to branch out. "Why don't we have Thai food, Mom?" "Hey, let's try chestnuts in the stuffing this year!"
Today, the same kids who survived middle school on American cheese slices are downright connoisseurs. My daughter, she of the pallid palate, cannot resist Chinese pot stickers. Her brother serves a mean Cajun chicken.
As parenting mistakes go, I suppose my food fights were
less harmful than some. Certainly they took a greater toll on me than on my
children, neither of whom suffered from scurvy. Looking back, I still wouldn't
fight over hair - but I wouldn't go to war over lima beans either.
Martha Wharton is a
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