Dan Dan the Broccoli Man

Not only do the kids EAT their food now, but they help COOK it!  My son makes the meatloaf (about once a month) and helps with the broccoli along with helping cook breakfast, lunch and dinner most days.

This is insanely delicious and I'm too embarrassed to admit how often we eat this roasted broccoli!

A few handfuls of broccoli, washed and dried
some olive oil
some garlic
some lemon juice
some salt and pepper (or better yet, Montreal Steak Seasoning!)

Mix it all up. Line cookie sheet with foil. Bake at 425° for about 12 minutes. The more olive oil, the better!

After about a year and a half of cooking dinners and eating dinners together every night together at the table (except for those fun nights of eating pizza in the living room while watching a movie!), we've finally established new patterns. I just realized while updating this blog, that we don't have ANY (A N Y) complaining anymore. Dinner is served and "you get what you get, so don't make a fit". How grateful I am to have made it through the child training that should have been done when the children were toddlers. Better late than never. (I wrote about the complaining in a post here).

Dinner Discipline-The New LAW

OK, so I realize that most people deal with "dinner discipline" when their kids are little...by 2 or 3 years old the child understands the LAW. The LAW is "Mommy's job is to MAKE the food and your job is to EAT the food...if you don't like the food, then you are out of luck-and hungry".

As parents, John and I have had to face the music that we have intense behavioral issues with our kids around food because we never laid down the LAW early. I don't want to go into it all here, but suffice to say we have WHINING.

This is of course is demoralizing to the cook not to mention extremely draining and counter-productive. When I started on this "self-education" with regards to planning and preparing meals, I didn't know what WAR we had in store for us. So we have had to GET TOUGH and stick to our guns. Turning this around is going to be challenging...in fact this one change in our family has taken all the GUTS I've got.

So here's our new LAW. "Mommy's job is to make the food and your job is to eat it. You are required to taste test and if you determine you don't LIKE the food, then you are allowed to make (yourself) one peanut butter & jelly sandwich".

END OF STORY.

So...over and over again we have "I don't like this", etc and we have held firm with the LAW. The kitchen closes shortly after dinner is served so making that sandwich needs to happen after a few bites or no sandwich at all.

Do you think this is too harsh? Do you think it is mean to not allow your kids to rummage through the cupboards for an alternative to the meal you spent money on and lovingly cooked? We came to realize it was IRRESPONSIBLE and UNLOVING of us as parents to allow them to continue in the bad habits we had always allowed. Hard, hard lessons for all. We continue to fight the good fight of "dinner discipline" which is really more character training-for BOTH parent and children!