Dinner Wars

Eating dinner has always been a difficult thing in our family, a battle really. All three children initially had to be forced to eat anything not coated in sugar, except child #3 who would eat bread and some things coated in sugar. I forced her to eat a very small bite of banana cream pie the other day and it very nearly put her into hysterics. I can’t even begin to count the number of pleas, deals, threats, rants, tears, missed desserts, early bedtimes, and cold-dinners-for-breakfast over the past decade. I can count the number of times we had to “recycle” a non-eating child (once), but that’s a story for another time.

This brings me to last night: tomato soup and quesadillas. Surprisingly, it was not the tomato soup that prompted the problem, it was the quesadillas. I made the quesadillas from whole-wheat tortillas, which apparently violated some sort of dinner armistice. My only defense was that the package was already open and I didn’t want open a new package of regular tortillas until this one was gone. After some bellicosity and undiplomatic saber rattling, child #2 launched the opening salvo: she gagged on her first bite and affirmed that the quesadilla was too “wheat-y.” I countered with “the look.” Child #2 retaliated in kind. Julie attacked the flank with the classic, “it’s perfectly good – even [child #3] likes it.” Child #3 crossed the neutral zone and said she “kind of” liked it and requested more cheese. Child #0 took pleasure in being a neutral observer and fled to his bedroom as soon as he could. As the intensity escalated, Julie lobbed in the, “It’s all in your head,” and “don’t get yourself so worked up” grenades. On the verge of biological warfare, we switched strategies. We promised a trip for soft-serve ice cream cones at a local fast food place for all who finished their dinner. I had to leave the room to de-escalate tensions and permit settlement talks. Child #3 stopped asking for more cheese, but child #2 resisted. I returned to the negotiating table and Child #0 and I both got on our coats, upping the ante. Finally, with extra milk, child #2 dry-heaved her way through the entire quesadilla. The conflict was over. It had lasted nearly an hour, but Julie & I won. For those that think we bribed our way out and that this was merely an empiric victory, you are mistaken. The kids each got a free ice cream cone coupon from school that expired at the end of the week. We had to do it regardless. Ha, ha ,ha!

The aftermath made the battle ironic. Once we sat down with our ice cream (I got an Oreo shake because I had no free ice cream coupon), child #2 kept sharing her cone with others because she is a sloooow eater and her ice cream was to “melt-y.” I suppose some of you are not disgusted by trading licks on ice cream cones, after all one of the many parental responsibilities, particularly for dads, is eating a child’s leftover food after conceding a loss in one of the many food battles. However, this lick sharing was worse because after fixing child #2’s melt-y problem, I left little black flecks in the ice cream. (I had been eating my Oreo shake.) Rather than be disgusted by it (I was mortified personally and was planning on fixing the problem with a couple more good licks), child #2 was delighted. “Oh, I get Oreo bits in my ice cream cone – awesome!”