Eating Issues

You know how before you had kids you look at a particularly annoying mothering technique and think,"I will NEVER be like that when I'm a mother" and then you're that and about ten times worse? I specifically remember being with friends and one mother badgering her kid to eat more squash, that, no, she couldn't have dessert until she eats more squash and wouldn't she please please please eat a little more squash? I was ready to eat the entire plate of squash myself when the mom wasn't looking just so I didn't have to hear the word "squash" ever again. And I think squash is revolting.

Dear God I've become what I hate. Last night I heard myself pleading like that and wanted to take myself out to the barn and shoot myself like an old horse who needs to be put out of its misery. Except we don't have a barn. Or a gun. But you get the point. Granted, nobody was around to be annoyed by my begging except my children and the point was to annoy them, but still. My girls are the pickiest eaters in the world and would eat nothing but crackers, cookies, ice cream and milk (YES! IN A BOTTLE STILL!) if I let them. And some days I do. Because having my fingers amputated one by one with a plier sounds like more fun than arguing about food.

They are the worst at dinner time. "Chips?" one will ask me like it's completely plausible I will let them have potato chips for dinner. (They wouldn't know what a potato chip was if it wasn't for my husband. But I digress.) "Ice cream?" the other will say. Then it turns into "No din din!" "Chips!" "Ice cream!" "No peas!" And by that time I'm ready to shove a container of Haagen Daaz and two spoons at them and tell them to knock themselves out.

I've also starting using treats as a bribing technique, surely a habit that translates directly into a tween eating disorder in several years. "If you stop whining / play nice / take a bath we can have some ice cream," I suggest. They of course still get the ice cream if they've done none of the above.

I sit in amazement when I see toddlers who happily eat what their parents eat for dinner like a grownup except short and clad in head-to-toe Gymboree. What am I doing wrong? Why will my kids eat only about 4 things and all basically from the same food group? And after I slaved and sacrificed and made ORGANIC homemade baby food for crying out loud, this is how they repay me. (Although perhaps there is a correlation. I'm no cook, and my last name isn't Gerber, so maybe I turned them off to food completely by making it myself?)

Also, how can I start to tackle potty training when I don't have the mothering skills to GET THEM OFF THE DAMN BOTTLE? Somehow I picture the day they leave for college and me suggesting they don't drink beer out of their bottle because that might hamper their social life and asking if they made sure to pack enough Depends for the semester. Relatively stupid and incompetent people (don't make me name names) manage to transition their children to drinking milk out of cups, so I'm not sure why this seems insurmountable to me. I don't like to upset them -- and taking it away upsets them.

Can we all just take a moment and thank the universe I won't be procreating ever again?

PS -- I thought I loved celebrity gossip. But it's exhausting keeping up with what former childhood star bit his girlfriend's forehead in a drunken stupor and who's hassling the Hoff and what Courtney Love is wearing on her head. I mean, really.