What's for dinner?

Tonight was a good dinner night. Although I'm still tired from losing an hour of sleep a few nights ago, the sunshine gave me extra energy to be creative. It was pretty simple, actually. I cut up a couple chicken breasts, seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic and sauteed them in some olive oil on the stove. I then added some onion, a jar of sundried tomatoes and drizzled it all with balsamic vinegar. I stirred in cooked pasta and then tossed in some spinach and mixed it until it wilted. It was pretty good for a Tuesday, if I may say so myself...

You may be asking yourself, "so, what did the 2 year old eat?" And, that would be a great question. Contrary to popular belief, I am not a super mom. Mariana does not enjoy balsamic glazed chicken with wilted spinach over pasta. In fact, if I can get her to eat Mac & Cheese (which is what she ate tonight) I'm doing pretty good.

For the past couple months now, Rene and I have been struggling with what is probably a common conflict for parents. Do we force our daughter to try new things and eat what we prepare and risk nightly dinner distress? Or, do we continue to offer healthy choices and let her make her own decisions on what she is going to eat? As I have been reading up on this subject, I have learned that, like with most things, there are many strong opinions on this topic. Most family dinner advocates think that part of eating dinner together is everyone eating the same thing. Most seem to agree that forcing a child to eat everything on his or her plate is no longer a good strategy. However, these folks do believe that children should be taught to at least try everything put in front of them, out of respect for the cook and that this should be started at a very early age. The other school of thought is to offer healthy choices, including what is cooked for dinner, but to let the child choose. According to Shandley McMurray in her article Pleasing Your Picky Eater, the best way to get kids to try new foods are to not force them and to keep offering the same healthy the choices. Shandley says that it can take up to 15 times of a food being offered before a child will accept it and try it!

As for what to do with Mariana, I'm still not sure. For now, offering choices is working for us. We have tried demanding that she try at least one bite of what we make before letting her choose something else, but that usually ends with her screaming, eating nothing and Rene and I being frustrated and upset. When I just put things on the table, such as a plate of raw carrots and peppers, bread with dipping oil or pasta, she usually ends up nibbling on something, even if she is eating her Macaroni and Cheese at the same time. Every family needs to make their own decision on how to handle this with their children. But for us, right now, being together at the table is more important than everyone eating the same thing.

Here is the link for the article I referenced above:
http://recipes.kaboose.com/pickyeaters.html