Picket Fence Post

I have no more energy left to fight this battle.

With my 8-year-old.

Over what he’s going to eat for dinner every night.

I.

Have.

Had.

It.

And I’m tired of all these so-called food experts telling me that if I just make this, or serve something this way, or have the kid help me make something, or put smiley faces on the plate, or offer to put TV in his bedroom with unlimited TV viewing that he will eat the well rounded meals we make. I’m tired of reading articles telling me that if I keep serving up a wide array of foods I can turn any kid into a foodie. Newsflash for you folks: Ain’t gonna happen. Not with our youngest child. The Spouse and I have been trying for many years now. So I wish the food consultants would stop making me feel like a failure because The Youngest Boy won’t eat most of the food we serve him.

The Youngest Boy has NEVER been a good eater. When he was just a baby and starting to eat baby food, he refused veggies and quickly rejected almost everything but a handful of pureed fruits. I pulled out his baby book the other day and here’s an excerpt from the food section, “At 9 months, he despised chunky baby food. Wasn’t overly fond of carrots. Started rejected all baby food at 11 months. Then started rejecting most food.”

Carbs. That’s all he wanted. Even when I tried making the baby food myself, that didn’t work either.

I’ve consulted the cookbooks about slipping pureed veggies and meats into “kid friendly” foods to give them more of the nutrients they need. But the Youngest Boy caught on and would, most of the time, notice the difference. I’ve asked the pediatrician for suggestions and she’s, frankly, at a loss. I’ve tried to go the hey-let’s-make-everything-look-like-shapes route. I’ve had him cook with me. No dice.

This is the kid who can make himself vomit at will if The Spouse or I try to make him eat. (He’s also the same kid who goes absolutely nutty if he goes for more than three hours without food. It gets ugly. Trust me.) Once, I made him try, just try, one bite, of a banana. After about 10 minutes of cajoling and bribing, he took a bite, swished it around in his mouth, then vomited it back up. The same went for a piece of baked chicken we insisted he eat a year or so ago at the dinner table. It ended the same, stomach churning way.

Here’s what he WILL eat: Mac-n-cheese (ONLY from “the blue box,” ONLY some of the time though it’s difficult to predict when those times might be, ONLY if it’s not “too cheesy,” NEVER homemade), bean burritos with cheese, scrambled eggs, bagels with cream cheese, waffles, pancakes, cereal, apples, carrot sticks, peanut butter sandwiches, pasta with very plain marinara sauce on the side and an occasional meatball, hamburgers, pizza and a turkey sandwich (ONLY if it’s fresh turkey and he’s not in a persnickety mood). That’s about it. He, ironically, eats a wider variety of food at school because he said he actually likes their cooking better than mine or The Spouse’s. He adores cafeteria food.

Tonight The Spouse and I were in the mood to make a simplified version of my grandmother’s paella, a very much modified chicken, chorizo and saffron rice concoction. But then I remembered that The Youngest Boy hadn’t eaten a decent dinner in days. Last night he turned his nose up at the two entree choices — homemade corn chowder and a store-made chicken pot pie — and instead had cereal. The previous night, he took a pass on the steak, mashed potatoes, sliced apples, sliced cucumbers, store-bought though warmed croissants and teriyaki spinach/walnut dish. No, wait, he ate the apples, along with a bowl of cereal.

So instead of making what we wanted to eat, The Spouse and I made homemade chicken nuggets (with a recipe from one of the sneaky mom cookbooks), garlic/chicken couscous with accompanying white beans on the side, sliced cucumbers (The Girl, who’s also picky, WILL eat cucumbers), sliced apples and sauteed yellow squash. We thought we’d have a better chance of The Youngest Boy eating this particular meal because, at least once in the recent past, he said he liked my homemade chicken nuggets. It was not our night, however. Guess what he ate? Apples. And a single bean, a bite of a third of a single cucumber slice and a teeny, tiny chicken nugget piece. And only because we made him, after we endured a pleading melodrama for what seemed like a teeth-grinding eternity.

At least he drank two cups of milk.

Image credit: FunDraw.

The kid’s an unbelievably difficult eater. Wants to subsist on sweets and carbs alone. The Spouse and I have tried — largely in vain — to convince him to eat healthy fare, offering a variety of fresh foods at meals and snack times, insisting that at meals he just try one bite of each item of healthy stuff. That’s all. One bite. Then the kid can go crazy with his pasta with olive oil and grated cheese, a few apple slices and baby carrots until the end of time.

On a recent night we stuck to our plan, insisting that the kid eat a small piece of the roasted chicken we put on his plate. One teeny piece. In fact we encouraged him to pop the small piece into his mouth and wash it down with milk, followed by a big bite of French bread. Did he listen? No. Instead, under much duress, he put the chicken into his mouth and, as he chewed it veeerrryy slowly, rolling it around his tongue. His eyes grew watery and red, glaring hotly at us as he seemed to be moving in slow-motion.

“Just swallow it!” we shouted.

But it was too late. Without ever swallowing it, the kid projectile vomited all over the table, all over the red and white striped place mats, the bowls of leftover food. It ran across the table and dripped through the space between the table and the leaf and onto the floor. It took The Spouse and I almost a half-hour to clean up the mess.

Now the kid has sworn off all chicken, a major staple of our family meals.

What’s that they say about the best laid plans?