The Battle of the Green Vegetables
| The Battle of the Green Vegetables |
"I want you to understand something.", I say
My son sits at the table, with a plate full of vegetables, utilities on each side, and they're not moving.
My son replies, "I don't like Brussel sprouts!"
"But they like you! They told me so! Just eat a fork full!", I reply.
My son hates vegetables with a passion. Over the years, we've tried to hide them under bacon, put sugar on top of them, even poured "Kung Pao" sauce on them. ANYTHING so he would eat them. Just because he didn't like them, doesn't mean we didn't try feeding them to my son.
Why not? There is a common belief that as a parent you are under some sort of obligation to feed your kids the green stuff. They are chock full of vitamins that (if they don't absorb them as a kid) would lead to scurvy or some vitamin deficiency syndrome. Anyway, we are programmed by society to provide some sort of vegetable to your kids (outside of corn) to fill in their vitamin quotient.
My son is dead set against eating anything that is green. If we give him a bag of candy, he picks out the green ones and throws them away. How did he get that way? I don't know. At the end of the day if there is a vegetable, it better be covered with bacon, or else he's not touching it.
Frustrated, I sit at the end of the table and say, "In life, there is a whole bunch of stuff that you're not going to want to do, but need to because it's important to your life."
My son smiles and replies, "Got money?"
I shake my head, "Son, I'm not going to pay you to eat your vegetables."
"Got sugar?"
"No, son, I'm not going to pour sugar on your vegetables for you to eat them."
"Got --"
I stop this line of questioning by saying, "Son. There is nothing that I can do to convince you to eat your vegetables, except for the fact that you'll die a lot sooner than the rest of us if you don't."
I get up from my chair next to the table and walk to the kitchen in frustration.
I count from ten down to one, then go back to the dining room.
At that time, a divine miracle happened, the plate was empty, my son was smiling, and the vegetables were a thing of the past.
My son asks to be excused from the table, which I so because the vegetables were gone.
What happened? Why did he change his mind?
My son walks upstairs, and I look under the table ... at a very happy dog who has just finished my son's vegetables.
That's it for this blog post. Thank you for reading! If you have any questions, please let me know.
