Picture this:
18h30. Supper time in the Roux Household. Everyone is gathered around the table and dinner is almost done. Well no, not really. These days the kids are going for seconds and thirds.
We have had our fair share of fights about food. You know the script: “eat your food OR…”, “If you don’t eat your food there will be no snack/TV/friends to play” etc etc etc, so this has come as a real shocker. I mean, what will we do now for kicks? Is it even possible to have amicable meal? Suddenly there is dialogue, not threats and fights and begging.
And you know what the worst thing was that crossed my mind about 3 seconds after I felt really grateful that they were actually eating? “OMG, my kids are going to be fat.”
How ridiculous that you fight for years to get your kids to eat their food and then, when they finally do, all I want to do is rip that second piece of chicken out of their hands and shout NO!
Speaking of grabbing food out of a child’s hand that is the precise fight we are having with Daniel at the moment: not eating with his hands. When you have a small baby it’s quite easy to measure their milestones. You know they will start smiling at about 6 weeks. And you know what their poop will look like once you stop breastfeeding.
But when is a child supposed to comfortably be able to eat with a knife and fork? Where is the handy week-by-week guide to the 5 year old boy? And don’t think that any 2 websites will give you the same information about milestones.
All we mostly have is our gut and a lot of faith in our child’s abilities. And the intense need not to see our child eat his rice with his hands. And much as we ask him to use his fork to eat his food he will still use his other hand to scoop the food on to the fork or hold on to the one end of the chicken and the fork in the other. Makes us giggle every time. But he tries and that’s all that matters right now.
He has also decided that he wants to bath with his sisters and apparently they sprint for the bathroom when they walk in the door and Etienne has to bath them all at the same time, so it’s wet chaos when I get home. We seriously need a bigger bath..
