HEALTHY EATING / HONESTLY, DARA
Dinner Is
on the Table...
the Stairs
...the Floor...
Serving my kids a good,
healthy meal is only half the
battle. The bigger challenge
is getting them to eat it.
ILLUSTRA TIONS: TOM KACZINSKI
BY DARA MOSKOWITZ GRUMDAHL
TO HEAR THE PUBLIC-HEALTH EXPERTS
tell it, family meals are worth their weight
in gold. Researchers point to the fact that
children who eat regularly with their
families do better in school, have better
manners and delay having sex. They are
less likely to smoke, drink, do drugs, get
depressed, develop eating disorders — or
commit suicide. They are more likely to
eat vegetables and foods high in calcium
and to glow inside and out like little
human fireflies.
So, it’s too bad that my 2-year-old
spent last night at dinner groaning: “Me
free. Me freeeeeee. No food. No food.
Meee freeeee.”
Of course, the word set — as in “set
me free” — was implied, like the chorus
of a song. The chorus of a song celebrat-
ing the pointless tortures of a teeny-tiny
political prisoner stuck on a rocky point
surrounded by cruel guards.
This morning, I found a slice of raisin
toast she somehow spirited away and hid
beneath her potty. Meanwhile, her 4-year-
old brother has perfected a new trick:
taking food off his plate and, keeping his
hand close to his face, lobbing it with a sort
of overhand magician’s gesture so it flies
in a majestic arc away from his chair and
disappears down a nearby open staircase.
He’s also adept at turning his body
into a suddenly boneless pool of jelly
and slipping down under the table
like protoplasm. He has developed the
fascinating strategy of eating cheese
by individual atoms, masticating each
atom so thoughtfully and thoroughly
that eating a single checker-size piece
of cheese can stretch to an hour. He
eats only about 10 things, by the way —
most of them cheese, Cheerios and hard-boiled eggs.
Because of this eccentric diet, a good
part of every one of our glorious family
meals is spent trying to get him to eat
other things. And so, on the advice of
pediatricians, feeding therapists, chiropractors, nutritionists and so forth, we
work on expanding the foods he eats into
similar, but new, foods. And nearly every
day I enjoy making scrambled eggs for
him to lob down the stairs.
As near as I can tell, the real promise
of family mealtime goes something like
this: Start early and, with everyday prac-
tice, your child will soon learn to outwit
and exhaust his parents, so that by the
time he gets to high school, common pur-
suits such as smoking and drinking will
have no appeal, freeing him up for loftier
pursuits like taking a semester abroad
so that no public-health researchers
can survey what he’s up to.
