Eat Your Veggies!

It's dinner time! You set your table with a delicious meal you slaved away cooking. You call your children in from playing outside and ask them to wash up for dinner. Everyone gathers around the table and within in minutes someone is complaining about the meal you prepared. Many parents know exactly what I am talking about. As a parent of 4 boys I find this the most frustrating time of the day. I hate to cook simply because it feels so unappreciated. It is impossible to please them all.

One child likes meatloaf and the other hates it. One child likes spaghetti and the other despises the dish. How can I win? With all this chaos I am suppose to get everyone to eat their veggies. In this area I have some how achieved success. I can honestly say my children eat their vegetables with smiles on their faces. We have come up with some patterns and rules that I thought I would share with others suffering from this unfortunate dilemma.

The first rule in our house was mentioned in my first few lines. We, as a family, eat around the dinner table. I grew up in a family where we ate on around T.V. trays. Sometimes I would even take my plate to my bedroom and eat alone. One day during my high school years I went to a friend's house where they actually ate around the dinner table. I remember thinking it was like an episode of "Leave it to Beaver." They had actual conversations about their day with one another. They asked for someone to pass the salt. They griped about the latest football game and so on.

This concept of eating a meal at a table seemed so foreign, yet I found myself enjoying the experience immensely. I began going to their home for dinner more and more and vowed I would do this simple activity with any children I had in the future. Eating around a table may seem so trivial and appear to have nothing to do with getting children to eat vegetables. But you are wrong. Children learn by imitation. They learn by seeing what mom and dad are doing. This is such a vital part of encouraging healthy eating.