Dinner Time
As I sat at dinner tonight, I began contemplating something. I know that many of you parents have struggled with dinner time. I’ve always been a stickler when it comes to meals. I have never wanted to be a short order cook for my kids, and so for the most part, the kids are expected to eat what Jeremiah and I eat for dinner. And if they don’t, they don’t get anything else to eat and usually go to bed early.
But as I was remembering all the things I’ve made my kids choke down. The soup Olivia gags down, or the enchilada’s Eden pushes around on her plate until they’re cold and hard, yet still has to eat them, I began to wonder.
Does it really make a difference. I mean really, all those things your parents made you eat as a kid…..did you all of a sudden start liking them after the tenth or twentieth time your mom made you eat it? Or is it just a part of becoming an adult? I hated stroganoffe as a kid, and meat loaf too, but now I love them. On the other hand, Peas, and brussel sprouts were on my hate list, and still to this day I can’t eat them.
I don’t know what point I’m trying to prove hear. In fact, I’m coming to realize that there really isn’t any point at all. Just a question I’ve been mulling over in my head. Does it really make a difference if the kids eat scalloped potatoes tonight? Will they grow up and one day thank me for making them eat it? Or will they eventually just like what they like regardless of what I did or didn’t make them eat as kids. HHmmmm……..
I WANT to write ‘NO COMMENT’, but I too was forced to gag down the WHOLE oysters in the stew my Mom made, or the sauerkraut I absolutely HATED…endless nights of liver & onions for a family of 10! We were sent to bed, and had to try eating the rejected dinner food for breakfast…HOW mean and heartless is THAT????? ALL are still detestable to me at age 52, except for a VERY mild version of sauerkraut w/sausage & potatoes…I don’t think my parents methods made me appreciate those foods or the poor starving children in BIAFRA, any more than before the torture, so I TRIED to steer away from REALLY gross foods with our own children…and still got accused of being a shortorder cook at times, just because I’d let them separate the noodles/meat and NO SAUCE PLEASE from the Stroganoff…Oh well…kids will be kids, forevermore, until they grow up…it’s an Eternal truth!
Being that I love food I can’t remember a food I didn’t enjoy… Wait… I do and always will hate lima beans. Yuck!
I don’t like being a short order cook either…so I usually make things I know my kids will eat for the whole family and kick up mine and Joel’s food a little bit during/after cooking the kids portion. As they get older though, “eat your dinner or you’re going to be hungry” works just fine for us!