We as parents must be strong. We cannot back down. Remember that Pat Benatar song “Love is a Battlefield”?
We are strong, no one can tell us we’re wrong
Our battlefield was at our dinner table last night. I had made what I thought was a nice creative meal out of leftover pounds of turkey, egg noodles from a few meals ago and peas and carrot shreds that were begging to be eaten. I knew my family were not big soup eaters but I was going to try once more to get them to convert to the healthy way of soups for dinner. To me when the weather gets chilly and the winds start blowing, a hot bowl of soup hits the spot. It’s warm! It’s healthy and homemade! Not like that Campbell’s Soup that another supermarket shopper described as tasting like a salt-lick. (I love that description, btw.)
I bring the turkey noodle soup to the table only to get groans from Elizabeth. It was just me and the girls because Joe is on deadline writing about the sad state of affairs of Chiefs football. Like that soup pic?
“I don’t like soup, Mom,” she says.
This has the trickle-down effect of making my two-year-old convinced that I have hidden something horrible in her bowl of soup! Katie pushes aside the soup and we must go into full bartering mode.
No promises, no demands
Anyway, I tell her she must have three bites in order for me to get up and get her something else she’d like to eat. She still has her hands across her body in her classic “I’m two and not going to do what you want” mode.
“No!”
“Listen to me! You only need to eat three bites!”
“No.”
After a few minutes of encouraging mixed with threats, she takes a wee bite of noodle and spits it out. Elizabeth, thankfully or perhaps hearing the words “candy if you eat for me” starts eating the soup and seems to actually be liking it. Or, at least, the noodles.
Katie gets the “just two more bites” prompt without complying.
We are young, heartache to heartache we stand
Elizabeth moves on to another leftover - pizza. I tell Katie she can have pizza after her two bites. She cries. I yell and then take her to her crib for a few minutes. She yells and yells. Elizabeth wants to see her sister. I go back up to her crib and hug her. She stays close to my shoulder, tears in her eyes. I sit her at the table again. It’s been at least 20 minutes since I’ve dished up the soup.
We repeat the same bargains, a few threats just more calmly this time. Another five or 10 minutes go by. Elizabeth is eating leftover cranberry. I want to give my daughter something she’ll eat, but I know I cannot back down. I sigh. I wait.
I wait some more. Katie then takes a piece of broccoli. A few more minutes and a few more “eat one more bite and THEN you can eat some cranberry” and then a teeny, tiny smidgen of noodle gets nibbled. Why does eating three bites have to take 30 minutes? (She laps up the cranberry and pizza within minutes.)
Searchin’ our hearts for so long, both of us knowing
Love is hard.
Oh my, I am glad that there are others that do the “Three Bites” game. The sad part is my oldest is now 11 and we’re still doing with some vegetables. Argh. I’d like to tell you it gets better, but it might not, Margo!