Dinner drama

Lately, we've been having dinner issues with Austin. I know every kid goes through this but I would love one meal where I didn't have to try to convince him to eat his dinner.

Tonight was no exception. I fixed roast, carrots, peas, rice, and cantaloupe (for the kids). Both ate their fruit first and then moved onto something else. Andrew ate most of his dinner without much prodding. Austin, on the other hand, painfully sat there, staring at his plate, probably wishing that it would just disappear.

After we'd all finished (and Austin was still sitting there), I separated a little bit of the dinner from the rest for him to eat. After I caught him moving some of the "eat pile" back to the "not eat pile," I scraped the stuff he had to eat onto a smaller plate. He sat there, tearing his napkin to shreds, talking to his food, just looking at it. After a hour at the dinner table, he finally finished. I explained to him that the sooner he finished dinner the sooner he'd be able to do what he wanted to do (watch TV, play, etc.).

I'm sure I was this way as a kid. In fact, I vividly remember a dinner at my Granny and Papaw's house. She fixed gumbo and I proceeded to fix myself a huge bowl of it, mostly because there was shrimp in it. I, of course, picked everything out except for the boiled okra. Granny made me sit there for a long time (can't remember exactly how long) and then I think I had the bowl of boiled okra for breakfast the next day.

Knowing that every kid is this way doesn't make meal times any easier for us. When will we be able to have a meal where we're not begging, pleading, convincing, fussing, whining, stalling? Probably not for years. And then it will be Andrew's turn to go through this.