Disclaimers, Reassurances & Survival

I can be dramatic and speak in extremes. With my very dry humor, I can sometimes (read often), be misunderstood or taken very literally when I in no way mean exactly what I say. It's the whole "Say what you mean, mean what you say," idea. I very rarely follow this, in fact I follow this so rarely, that even when I'm serious, people often think I'm joking. It is a blessing and a curse depending on the day and the situation.

It has been mentioned by a few concerned people that starving our children is neither healthy nor safe. I feel like I should be very honest and clear, our children do not starve. If they are truly completely opposed to eating what we put in front of them, they get crackers, peanut butter and milk after we finish eating. We do make them wait until we are done because L will wait until the very last second before she trying her dinner. If we gave her the option she would live off crackers and peanut better rather than consider trying something new. It doesn't even matter how many times we sing Daniel Tiger's "You gotta try new foods cause they might be gooood, goooooooooooood!" song.

At the end of the day, we want the absolute best for them. Part of having the best is being able to branch out, try new things, know that you can try something, hate it, and still be a better person for it in the end. I'm getting pretty deep about the life long impact of eating peas.

As an aside, one of these concerned individuals was my father, the girl's grandfather. I feel it is worth pointing that as a former picky eater myself, I don't recall having custom made dinners made for me when I was younger and refusing to eat my fish sticks. I'm chalking this up to the difference between parenting and grand-parenting. Either way, our girls are incredibly blessed to have a multitude of people looking out for their well being. So, Eat or Starve*.

* By starve we mean experience a mild uncomfortable feeling of hunger while you refuse to eat the food sitting in front of you and instead wait for graham crackers and peanut butter. **

** This version is not nearly as catchy.  It is also very long and hard to remember.

Suspicious Little Pigeons

I majored in psychology in college. One of my classes, sort of affectionately nicknamed Pigeon Lab, met each week to put pigeons into Skinner Boxes (side note, these are named for B.F. Skinner, a psychologist and behaviorist that developed the idea of operant conditioning). The boxes are programed to reward our little feathered friends for doing certain tasks, aka pecking the red light instead of the green light, so they could be rewarded with a pellet of what must be incredibly delicious pigeon food. Turns out these birds are really smart. Skinner trained a few to play ping pong using these techniques, you can check it out on the Smithsonian's website, really.

One of the most difficult behaviors to stop is a behavior that has been reinforced randomly. If every time the pigeon pecked a green button it received food it would just keep pecking away.  But, if you stop rewarding that behavior, it will eventually stop pecking the green button. However, if sometimes you give the pigeon food, and sometimes you don't, the poor little guys will just keep pecking at that little button because they just never know if a delicious pellet will appear.

I think we are creating little suspicious pigeons at our house. We try to be consistent with our plan, but it is hard. M is pretty regularly choosing Starve. She's not losing weight, she has plenty of food to eat, she just chooses not to do so. I think she had pizza all three meals yesterday because neither of us could argue any more. She woke up begging for "cold pep-a-poni pizza" for breakfast, she's basically ready for college. I know its bad in the long run, but it brings such a ridiculous amount of joy to my heart to see that kid eat.

Sunshine & Oxygen

It seems, if you have more than one child, you have an "easy" child that just kind of fits into the existing rhythm and flow of your life, and a "trying" or "difficult" child that is completely counter to everything in your world. Neither is better than the other, its just that one is easier while the other makes you question your sanity.

We had our "easy" child first. L was the kind of baby that made you wonder why people claimed having kids was hard. The pediatrician actually had to tell us to wake her up every 4-5 hours to make sure she was eating at night. We set an alarm to wake up and feed our sleeping infant, we were THOSE people. By 5 months our little rock star was sleeping 14 hours a night. On weekends we had breakfast in bed and lounged around until 11am or so when she woke up, happy. We concluded, obviously, we were simply gifted and amazing parents. Logically, we added a second child a mere 20 months after L.

L was not impressed with the new edition to the family. That look remained on her face until M was about 9 months old and, can still be seen on a fairly regular basis.

If L was our easy baby, M definitely balanced out our baby karma. She was happy and delightful, but she refused to sleep or eat with any sort of consistency. She preferred to be held, at all times and with both hands, and she had horrible re-flux so she always smelled vaguely of sour milk. (To be fair, the smell might have been mostly in my head). I'm guessing all of these went together in a nice little cause and effect package, but we never got far enough into it to figure it out. She was not especially comforted by food or nursing, she wanted her people; if you ever wanted to just sit an snuggle a baby, M was your kid. She still is, her happiness comes from being in very very close proximity to the people she loves the most, and from terrorizing her sister. 

As she grew, she didn't gain a lot of weight. The pediatrician would double check her weight, ask what exactly she was eating, how often etc. I remember at one point, feeling rather beaten and exasperated, I proclaimed she was surviving off "Sunshine and Oxygen." He chuckled, probably because he didn't realize I was being fairly serious.

Side note:  some guy in India swears he lived of nothing other than water and sunshine for 11 years. Its on the internet, it must be true; apparently NASA studied him in 2003? Maybe M was a Sun Gazer or Sun Eater in a former life?

M, soaking in her daily dose of Sunshine and Oxygen, while simultaneously irritating her older sister. She's a multitask-er.

The High of Success, the Low of Status Quo

The girls' Aunt and Uncle offered to babysit the other night so we could have an evening out. Obviously we accepted. My sister-in-law bravely agreed to continue Eat or Starve at their house. After a quick pep talk in the car about being respectful, kind and trying new things, we dropped L & M off and ran for the car.

Before the movie began, my phone buzzed twice. I braced myself for the inevitable "The girls are sobbing," "They are hungry and they won't eat dinner," etc. text. Instead I was greeted with this:

Each picture came with a single word attached, "Before." This immediately lead me to believe a horrendous "After" photo was coming; maybe broken dishes, peaches in hair, ketchup on their lovely upholstered chairs, the possibilities were fairly endless. I nervously waited for the follow up text:

"And after!! I'm sure the fact that we're not Mom and Dad played a part in them eating so well. L even tried and likes the cooked peaches!" I sat in my movie theater, more in awe of the awesomeness that had just occurred a few miles away than I was of the previews in front of me. They ate it. L tried something new and admitted she liked it. She's fiercely confident in her opinions, if you catch her at the right time, she would deny she liked chocolate covered chocolate just a prove herself correct. I admire that about her, I think she got that from me. I couldn't help but think "It's really working, they are starting to eat like normal people; well normal people that really like ketchup." We settled in to watch our movie full of the confidence of someone that just solved a major world problem.

Fast forward to the next evening.  We were out at a neighborhood party, lots of friends and food. L did a fairly good job of eating fruit and mac & cheese, but that's not really a challenge for her. M, on the other hand, ate oranges and Doritos all night. That was it. With my sails deflated we soldier on, maybe the next victory will come sooner rather than later?

The beginning of the end

Eat or Starve was born of desperation. With the wide-eyed wonder of new parenthood, I remember faithfully researching the best food to be your child's first food. I researched the best gadgets to make the most nutritious, organic, non GMO, etc etc foods for them to eat in puree form. I remember the anticipation of watching their beautiful little faces light up when they first tasted avocado, and spit it immediately on my shoes.

Picky eaters will slowly erode your belief in "healthy" and "nonhealthy" foods. There are calories and there are no calories, there are good eating days and not good eating days. When your picky little eater falls off the growth chart at their doctor's appointment, you find yourself wondering if maybe you could switch your kid from whole milk to half & half.

Eat or Starve is our correction from the craziness of being a short order cook; from accommodating the whims of tiny little people prone to rapidly changing whims. It is the realization that part of raising the geniuses of tomorrow is helping them learn to eat whatever is put in front them, because they don't serve chicken nuggets or mac and cheese at State Dinners or the Nobel Prize Awards. Eat or Starve is our mantra during meal time now.