Pause whatever you’re doing, and ask the
person nearest you what they’re thinking about (call someone if you have to).
Write a post based on it.
I made the
mistake (perhaps) of asking my 11 year old what he was thinking because he was
the closest person to me (other than my dog).
He told me that he was thinking about asking me if he could go upstairs
to have his macaroni and cheese that he had just made and is eating at the
table. So, not sure what I can say about
that except to explain to you why my youngest son is making his own dinner and
eating it at the table by himself. Well, it’s because he’s the pickiest eater
in the WORLD!! Seriously. So, the deal
is, if he’s not going to eat what we eat for dinner (usually around 6:30 each
night), then he has to make his own dinner (beginning at 5:30, so he is done
and out of the kitchen in time for the adults to prepare their dinner). Funny thing is, he’s okay with this. That’s
how picky he is.
I know there
are lots of other children like this, but you have to remember that my son is
eleven now, and he’s STILL this picky. Bread, cheese, chicken, a hamburger
sometimes, cauliflower sometimes, carrots, apples, peanut butter and honey
sandwiches, cheese quesadillas and cheese tacos (we call them “cheese
vessles”), salsa and chips, any processed or junk food, such as Ramen noodles
and any fast food restaurant’s chicken nuggets, fingers, or tenders, tilapia
(if it’s breaded and fried), potatoes (baked or french fried), steak
(sometimes), honey vanilla yogurt, white rice, graham crackers and peanut butter
with bananas, grapes, pancakes, scrambled eggs and bacon, french toast,
popcorn, and that’s about it…AND that is a pallet vastly expanded from where it
used to be. Oh, and cheese or pepperoni
pizza, of course. There may be a few
other small things, but that’s really almost the entire menu all the time! It
seems like a lot when listed out this way, but it’s mostly bread products and
cheese if you really look at it. There’s
hardly any fruit or vegetables and very little meat. Basically, there’s no variety…
We’ve tried,
and we continue to offer all kinds of new foods to him. Occasionally, he finds
one he can tolerate, but more often than not, he does not become a fan. So, this is what we’ve come to, in order to
keep everyone’s sanity. He makes his
own, and he’s happy with that. When he
grows up, he’s going to choose what he wants to eat anyway, so why force it. We
model pretty good eating habits with lots of variety and very little processed
or fast foods, but he’s still attracted to that first and foremost.
Oh well,
what can you do? As parents, our job is to love our children unconditionally,
teach them life skills, including manners, cleanliness, household chores,
academic skills for school, and how to deal with and resolve conflicts. Basically,
we are to model for them healthy relationships and life management skills and
hope that they will be able to leave our home at 18 and fend for themselves
successfully. If teaching our son how to
cook his own meals and make meal-planning decisions for himself isn’t a
valuable life skill, I don’t know what is.
Oh, and we also make him clean his own bathroom, pick up his room, do
his own laundry (including folding the clothes and putting them away, and
vacuum now and again, and of course, use his manners, and not talk back (this
last one is a work in progress). I’d say that’s not a whole lot compared to
what children were expected to do in my parent’s generation, but it’s where we
are at as parents today. Where do you
stand on the subject?
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