creative.mother.thinking

explaining my life to strangers

Sugar

by 16 Comments

Since I’m not completely stupid I already have known that my relationship with sugar is a little, um, intense. I remember sneaking sweets as a child, raiding the whole apartment for candy and eating glasses of honey and boxes of powdered sugar. When I was a child all I ever drank was soda and cocoa. When as a teenager I started drinking juice instead of soda for health reasons that was a hard transition. When I was in my twenties and was afraid that I had scurvy I cut back on sugar drastically. I stopped putting sugar in my tea. Well, mostly.

Back as a teenager when I was still very Christian I tried to give up candy for Lent every year, I only managed that (and it was real hard) when I still ate big amounts of cookies and cake every day. I don’t think I ever had a day in my entire life where I didn’t eat sugar at all.

In the past years I made a lot of changes: I never eat candy against hunger anymore. I don’t have something sweet after every meal. I restrict the amount of chocolate I eat. And I was very, very proud of myself to finally having that problem under control.
Only I hadn’t. After two years of making little rules around my candy consumption I had to realize that I still am not able to sit in the kitchen and read in the evening without eating much more candy than I intended to. When we visited my parents on Christmas my mother made a point of putting big bowls of candy and cookies right under my nose (she is a little jealous because I lost so much weight and she gained a little). I couldn’t resist. And not like “Oh my god, I ate TWO COOKIES!” But still like “I don’t know how and when but I just inhaled the whole bowl.”

So when I thought about addiction in my family I realized that maybe my biggest addiction might be to sugar. And that maybe ties in with my compulsive eating. There are other things that I turn to when I eat compulsively (and I do that less and less) but most involve sugar. In the past when I went on a binge I was after the sugar high. I didn’t mind throwing in some bags of potato chips and a couple of beers but if I had to choose I’d have taken the sugar.

So now I can report how it feels to have abstained from sugar for a whole week. And I haven’t even drunk much. It is the third time ever that I even tried. The first time I started after reading Christine Kane’s post about “How to give up coffee in 7 easy steps“. I don’t like coffee and avoid it wherever I can but in that post she mentioned sugar and so I thought, “Why don’t I try to cut back on candy?” Notice that I didn’t think “Why don’t I cut back on sugar?” Because I knew of former experiences that if I wanted to reduce my candy consumption there had to be cookies or cake in this. The first time I tried for a week I succeeded. The second time I cut the week short due to something really important I no longer remember.

Then suddenly a week ago on Saturday I said, “I’m addicted to sugar. I won’t eat it anymore. Period.” Immediately I begun to see how much sugar I really was eating. It’s not only candy or chocolate. It is yoghurt, it is ketchup, soda, sometimes even vegetables. And I began scheming: what would I tell people when I was invited in the afternoon (eating cake and drinking coffee is an integral part of German social life), what would I tell my mother, whom would I tell? All this was completely irrational and only showed how important sugar was to me. There was no need of a big declaration. No need to prepare for if I ever would be invited to a party, I’d just say thank you. But in my mind it was a very big thing.

That Saturday we had a party at our house, about fifteen people, some with children. The first thing was that my mother-in-law made cake. I love cake. Of the people that came three brought cake and three brought chocolate. Two brought fruit salad. It was potluck but usually people bring more salad. The whole buffet had only three salty things and all the rest was sugary. Never have I been to a party in my life where there were so many sweets. That was my first test.

I failed. I started with trying the cake at 3 in the afternoon and only stopped for sleep. The next day I continued with cake and chocolate until at 3 on Sunday my husband said, “What are you doing I thought you didn’t want to eat sugar because you are addicted to it. I’d like to throw that stuff away.” And I nodded and said, “Go ahead.” He put the rest of our candy in a hiding place that is hard to reach.

Since then I have stayed “sober”. The first days I thought about sneaking candy while running errands. Every single day after lunch and dinner I get this craving for chocolate. It feels like it’s sucking me in. How can one end a meal without eating a little chocolate-y goodness afterwards? The first days it felt like there was a little, furry predatory beast inside of me that howled, “Feed me! Feed me!”

I didn’t. I haven’t felt withdrawal much. Yesterday we went on a walk and then into a café. I decided to give myself a treat. I ate a piece of cheesecake. I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would and it felt as if it was too much but of course I ate it anyway. And the little piece of chocolate that came with my latte. Yeah, I had it all. Milk which always sits very heavy in my stomach, coffee which I don’t like and cake and chocolate. We went back home and I thought, “That’s the way to go. Have sugar as a treat on Sundays.”

All was well. Only my PMS worsened. And I felt very moody. And I couldn’t sleep well. And I yelled at my husband. Of course that’s all the coffee’s fault.

Or not. Because during the week without sugar (apart from one cube of brown sugar in my enormous cup of morning tea) I felt calmer than ever before in my life. In the midst of my midlife-crisis there was a calmness inside of me that I have never known before.

So I’d say that I react sensitive to sugar. And I’d say my son does this too. He is devouring sweets and sugary yoghurts like crazy. And afterwards he is hyper. And in a bad mood. Angry.

Interestingly this week hasn’t been hard for me. It was a little weird when I went grocery shopping and realized what I couldn’t eat anymore but so what. I still don’t quite know what to eat for an afternoon snack. This week it has been nuts and raisins. (I don’t like fruit in its natural state.) But I’ll continue this. I feel better. I don’t want addiction in my life anymore. By the way I have been avoiding alcohol too. It just doesn’t appeal to me anymore.

Who would have thought that possible…

Addiction

by 17 Comments

Hello, my name is Susanne, and I am a sugar addict.

Well, only a couple of weeks ago I would have said there is no such thing but then I had to admit it.

Those conversations with my husband during the last few weeks were not all about gazing into each other’s eyes, holding hands, and declaring our deep and unconditional love; we also had to face some things about ourselves that we didn’t want to face before. We were certain our relationship was sound and extraordinarily happy, yet I felt compelled to buy books like “Getting the Love You Want”. A couple of days ago my husband threw the word codependency in and addiction and something in me clicked.

When I wrote about my depression (and I’m still reluctant to call it that because it is so mild) Esereth said there had to be a deep cause for that. It hit home with me but I didn’t see a cause. I have been thinking about it, trying to unearth something but all I got was “Depression is anger turned inward” on which I started writing a blog post until I remembered that Flylady had already written about that. I know that I am a very aggressive person. Mostly it stays put, I’m mild and polite and smiling and turn on myself with the things I do compulsively. Like eating and reading and computer games (which I had to give up) and watching TV and reading blogs. So most things I do compulsively are things one can do in moderation for fun. And cutting out all of them is not the point because then I’d find something else instead.

What I never thought about was what I am so angry about. Why am I aggressive? And then my husband said “codependency” and I remembered that I already knew that my father is an alcoholic. I just didn’t think about it anymore.

I thought a lot if I should write this or not. I try to only write things I’d tell people in person too but I wouldn’t like my parents to read this. I thought that maybe I should talk to my father first before telling it to all the world but I didn’t. I think I will have to confront him with it eventually but I don’t think this will change anything for him.

And before you all start feeling sorry for my poor mother who is married to an alcoholic in denial let me tell you that she has issues with addiction too. Just try to come between her and her nicotine. So I have to face it I inherited an addictive personality and the psychic wounds that go with growing up in a dysfunctional family.

Not visibly dysfunctional though. I don’t have a father who drinks himself into a stupor and passes out. He never lost a job because of it. When recently somebody said, “Well, every family has a secret.” I thought, not mine. Obviously I’m very versed in denial.

Now I remember how much my parents fought over putting like little fences and rules around the alcoholism. How my father wasn’t allowed to drink before he ate something. How he wasn’t allowed to have the cognac bottle on the living room table but had to put it back every time. How when my father was still working and I was still living at home the top priority of every family member was to feed him dinner as soon as he came home. So he wouldn’t drink his dinner. He never ate at work. He’d leave the house in the morning without breakfast, spend the whole day drinking coke, and come back home where he’d often end the day on beer and cognac before falling asleep in front of TV.

My father is mild, polite, intelligent, a little distant but very caring and emotional underneath. Once in a while he explodes. All his frustration and anger, all those repressed feelings come out in a burst and then that’s it. Only this week did I find out how frightened I am by the least bit of aggressive behavior. I accused my husband of talking to me in a way that I felt as if he hit me, and all he did was tell me things I didn’t want to hear in a very calm and reasonable way. Only then did I think of the two incidents where my father completely lost his temper with me and hit me and then sent me up into my room where I cowered in a corner, wept and thought the world was about to end. Only this time did I realize that I must have been only two years old, three at the most, and that the most hurtful thing about that probably was that nobody came after me to console me afterwards. Now I know why I often have the feeling to expose myself and make me vulnerable when my husband has the feeling that I’m distant and withdrawn.

Now I know why I never drank a drop of alcohol when I still lived at home and never started smoking at all. I’m really, really angry at my family for pretending that all is well.

Alcohol is not the problem for me. I have a couple of addictive behaviors that I might have to give up or not. That’s not that important right now, but my relationship with sugar is worrying and so I decided to give it up.

And since this already is too long, I’ll write another post about that.

Relax and Refocus

by 24 Comments

or: What I did for the last, um, month or so.

New! Now with better spelling and added links!

First of all, some of you might remember that I signed up for “February Album Writing Month”. Well, I have three started songs, none of them finished. This had to do with several things. I jumped into that project a week too late and without preparation (no pre-assembled food this time), I was determined not to loose sleep over this one and, maybe the biggest obstacle, I have been having tonsillitis since the beginning of February now. I’m currently on my third round of antibiotics and hope to fend the bacteria off for good this time. Any good vibrations sent my way are deeply appreciated. My husband had another kind of bacterial infection, staph. Not pretty, highly contagious which sent us on a quest to wash every single thing he touched in the whole house while feeling queasy and weak from infection and penicillin. All that time we were worried that our son might get any of our illnesses, but no, he had chickenpox. And another ear infection on top of that.

Those are the few moments when I regret being self-employed. When the doctor asked me, “What do you do for a living?”, and I said, “I’m working as a singing and piano teacher.” and she replied “Not this week.” and I had to work anyway. I cancelled one singing lesson and had two students calling in sick, so all went well. But I’d rather have stayed in bed.

One other reason why writing 50,000 words in a month did work and writing 14 songs in a month didn’t was that I can write my 1,700 words in about two hours but a song takes much more time than four hours. I originally had planned to just record a couple of 3 minute long free improvisations and count those as songs but my sore throat made that impossible. Also I don’t really want recordings of a dozen improvs, I’d like to have a couple of songs.

But now for the important things like why I haven’t been blogging much lately. Well, to be frank, I fell in love. Oh, no worries, I fell in love again with my husband. We have been acting like newfound lovers, talking and talking to each other. It is amazing. I’m not quite sure if this is legal. It feels weird and surreal but very good at the same time.

About two weeks ago we decided to turn our lives around big time. You might ask why because everything seemed to be good before. Well, but there were two things a little off. One thing was that with all my improvements, plans, strategies and systems my life didn’t feel like I wanted it to. I thought I had to become even more efficient, more goal-oriented, more organized; always leaving space for a little fun or creativity of course because otherwise I’d know it wouldn’t work. My life became a series of thin slices of time. I would have loved to be able to slice time like these monks in the “Thief of Time” who were able to move very fast and accomplish things other people couldn’t but I had to fall back on giving myself little allotments of time. “So now you are allowed a little blog reading for ten minutes and then you have to make lunch. When you have cleaned up the kitchen you might have ten minutes for taking a shower and then you have to practice scales for three minutes before you have to teach. – And don’t dawdle!” Somehow that didn’t work as well as I had imagined it would. Instead I’d often spend all the time reading blogs then taking the shower and open the door to my first student with slightly damp hair. So, of course, I set intent to be even more structured and effective, to make my chores streamlined and efficient so that I would have more time for the things that I love. I complained that I did everything right but that life felt wrong anyway.

My husband on the other hand whom I deemed morally superior and successful with his “monolithic approach” to life had the exact same feeling about life. I think I have talked about this approach before but can’t find it right now. The “monolithic approach” means that you do a necessary minimum of housework, exercise, social contact and such and otherwise you just teach and make music. Nothing else. I always admired him for being able to do this but I knew this could not be my approach because every time I tell myself I can’t have something I immediately dash off to get it. Like when I set the firm intent to focus on songwriting only, and then immediately got myself a blog. Or whenever I went on a “diet” and then immediately spent the next weeks bingeing. But he has succeeded in making two CDs this way amidst house renovations and the birth of our son. Then, one day I talked to him about something De wrote about her husband reading her blog and we started talking about what all those new things I’m doing like blogging and writing mean for him. And he told me that maybe he wanted to have new and exciting friends too. Maybe even on-line friends. How he didn’t like my immersion in blog-land because he still was disappointed that I hadn’t made writing songs my top priority. And not because he was so attached to having a composing wife but because I said so. Ouch.

We started talking in earnest. I really thought we were talking a lot before, but as I said, now we’re back to the kind of talks people have when the meet for the first time and fall in love with each other. We have been living quite separate lives apparently. Every evening we would sit in our respective rooms and do something alone. I’d spend all my time sitting in front of the computer with my back to everyone while my husband was playing guitar in the next room. We already knew that we had had a tendency to polarize in the last years but we didn’t knew that we had taken it that far. He’d be the fuser and I the isolator. I’d be the one to constantly try new things and go places and he’d be the one staying home. I’d be the one to read comics and watch TV and he’d be the one quoting Hegel. I’d be the one with the midlife crisis and he’d be the calm one who already had gone through it.

And then we started talking about how he felt lonely too. And a little jealous. And how we forgot how much we love spending time with each other. And that it is not possible for one of us to have a crisis without the other being affected. And then he started reading my blog posts. And instead of just rolling his eyes when I’d say the word blog or blogger he really questioned me about it. “Why are you doing it?”, “But you already have a real life, why do you want to have a virtual one too?” “Is blogging really a valuable creative outlet?” and “Why do you need to sign up for something like NaNoWriMo in order to get something accomplished? Don’t you think your desire to write might be fake?” and the always dreaded “You know that you can’t have it all in real life, don’t you?”. And this time he didn’t ask to make me cave in and say that I only do all these things like an addict craving numbness but that there might be valid reasons for all those things too.

So we both made a commitment that our relationship and family comes first. To really be where we are at all times. Not sitting in front of each other nodding with a mind somewhere else. And you know what? I really enjoy spending time with my family. When I’m not constantly thinking I should be doing something else instead. We acknowledged that our lives are full enough as it is. Even if we were to do only our jobs, housework and parenting, life would be full enough. That doesn’t mean that we won’t strive to be creative but it does mean that we honor what is. And if I prioritize my life by spending hours and hours in front of the computer then I shouldn’t tell myself that I really want to be a songwriter.

When we made that decision it felt as if a tension fell off that had been there for years. For a week or so I felt totally shapeless. As if the pressure had been the only thing to give me structure. It still feels scary. Going into the unknown without a plan. But I decided to trust myself. That I don’t need to be an efficient goal-achiving machine to get things done. That not having a plan and a timetable wouldn’t mean that I would spend my days in bed reading, watching TV and eating while surfing blogs. I still have a little voice inside of me that is saying, “But you don’t get anything done. You should be cleaning right now.” but I don’t think the house will fall apart if I continue to not doing zone work for a couple of weeks.

I try to be label-free for now. No more thinking about whether I’m a write or a musician or both. I had to accept a couple of truths though that I didn’t like. It seems that I’m much more unreliable than I would have liked. And much more sidetracked. That my enthusiasm has to be taken with a grain of salt which I already knew. That I am much less patient than I would have liked. But that my husband is okay with that as long as I don’t pretend to be something that I’m not. And after crying and feeling awful for a couple of days (I really want to be reliable. Really. And I worked so hard on that one.) I feel relief. I can just let it go. Not that I want to become one of those people who say, “Well, that’s just the way I am, I can’t help it.” but to know it. So I can work with it instead of against it. Like I had to accept that I can’t be trusted around potato chips and chocolate and so I had to make up rules for myself.

I know this is a long post but there are still things I haven’t talked about. Sometimes life is so full that you can’t write about it. It fells exciting and scary. And who knows, my husband might even take up blogging. For now it feels weird but good to have a husband who not only reads this but actually tells me to go blogging already instead of asking if I’m still sitting at the computer. And it feels very liberating to let go of all those intentions and goals and plans and just do what I’m doing and enjoy it.

Technorati Tags: ,

Thinking Blogger Award

by 14 Comments


I won, I won! Well, to be precise I got tagged by De. The Thinking Blogger Award got me thinking for a couple of days. First, I didn’t really got how it works and then I had to think of whom to tag. And then, thanks to the research power of a librarian I actually was pointed to the origin of the Thinking Blogger Award at the Thinking Blog. And as one might guess from the new and improved title of my blog I’m all for the thinking.

A little light thinking always makes my day though I reserve the heavy thinking for Sundays and professionals. It was easy to come up with a list of bloggers that I wanted to give the award to but then I found each one of them already got one: De, Jen, Mad, Chani, Her Bad Mother and Beck. And I didn’t really know if I wanted to tag bloggers who think or bloggers who make me think. Then I briefly considered tagging the whole of my blogroll including the blogs that I read which are not on the blogroll. Then I shut down for a day or two (My motto at the moment is “Relax and Refocus”, and I’ll tell you why in a day or two. Promise.)

So, I was looking for bloggers who think (or whom I think to be thinking), whom I read and who don’t have a Thinking Blogger Award yet. And then it hit me! They don’t have to be bloggers who read my blog! I might have to tag them by e-mail but that made the whole task much easier. So I’m giving a Thinking Blogger Award to (drum roll please!):

Christine Kane, who always makes me think. Her blog is what mine wants to be when it grows up minus the animals and plus the child. Okay, maybe I’ll have a cat someday.

Jory DesJardins who writes deep and insightful posts and is living proof that a blog doesn’t need to be updated ten times a day to be extraordinary.

Frau Kaltmamsell who is one of the few German bloggers whose blog I genuinely like and who is thinking about everything that comes her way, be it food, people or poker. (Mostly people of course.) And who is living proof that even blogs which are updated a couple of times a day can be thoughtful.

Lia, also living in Germany but not German who tends to write short observational posts. She writes that her blog is meant to be like overheard pieces of conversation…

And Nneka who is writing about spirituality applied to life (and who’s on the “meditation diet” too).

Writing this post was really hard. For one I’m sick and my brain is only barely functional, but for two I had a hard time leaving people out. On the other hand (there’s always another hand for me, isn’t it?) this is a chain-letter-like meme so eventually everybody will get included.

Now I have to decide whether to write e-mails informing those five bloggers or just waiting for them to find me through backlinks. What would you do?

Technorati Tags: ,

Color, orange or mourning the paradigm shift in fashion

by 9 Comments

Orange is my most favorite color in the world. It’s vibrant and fiery and friendly and sunny and warm. And it suits my complexion.

It’s also associated with the second chakra, with – according to Sonia Choquette – our vitality, our emotional and sensual well-being. With quite basic needs though not as basic as those attributed to the first chakra, the foundation where our personal power and well-being originate. The first chakra is associated with the color red.

Sadly, orange will soon be out of fashion again. You can see it. Right now clothes for young women are brown, soft pink, black or white. Orange clothes can only be found in stores for women age 50 and older. So, out of fashion it is.

This happened to me once before. At the end of the seventies, orange vanished and I had to transfer my love to hot pink. Well, I might like pink too, but pink doesn’t like me. I can live with red, that’s okay, but not as good as having the choice between red and orange.

There was a shirt I once saw and didn’t buy at the time because I was pregnant then, and I still lust for it: Indian, tie-dyed, orange, red and pink with an image of Ganesha on the front. Ah.

I’ll be quite content as long as they leave me at least some color, but I fear the days of black only are coming back. Not that I have anything against black as such. Marvelous color. Especially for shoes and pants. (Even for blogs.) But tops?

You see, I’m an autumn type. That means I look good in brownish colors, moss green, burgundy, burnt orange or terracotta. Some autumn people may wear caramel or pastels but not me. Pale colors, white and especially black or pink make me look s if all color had been drained out of my face. Oh, and don’t forget gray.

There used to be a time when I wore black, grey, red and green exclusively. With very pale makeup and very red lipstick. Those were the early 90s. Vampire look. Then a friend told me that maybe grey and black were not the ideal colors for me and you know what? Nobody has asked me if I felt sick when I was actually healthy since I changed my look.

So, I’m mourning the fashion shift. There were orange tops, orange sweaters, even orange purses, backpacks and shoes. One time they even made my favorite computer wear tangerine. No more.

Do you think it will come back sometime? In 30 years or so? For now I’m stockpiling on moss-green and brown.

(This is what happens when I cheat and use my writing group assignment for a blog post. And when I write my writing group assignment on the way to the meeting on the train. The train ride only takes 20 minutes. I’ll be back with regular posting next week.)

How not to make your child a picky eater

by 22 Comments

You know, I only write these headlines so that many, many people will find me through goggling. Because I so totally know that there is no foolproof method for anything in child-rearing. But then, I am a little tired of hearing all these mothers saying, “But she doesn’t like anything. If I don’t give her [enter food of choice here] exclusively she’ll starve herself to death.”

First of all I very much doubt it. Most children tend to have that much survival instinct that they don’t starve in front of a full plate. As the wise Moxie always says food is one of the few things that children can control. The more it is important for you the more you will have a power struggle. So now I tell you what we did. And our son eats absolutely everything. So when he was about nine months old we started giving him part of the meals that we were eating. When he was older than a year he ate everything we did. We continued cooking the same as ever, only, we found out that eating hot food caused his diaper rush so we cut back on that.

What we do is this: At mealtime we sit down and everybody gets a plate with the meal of the day. With all of it. My son then eats. When he is clearly done, the rest will be thrown away. If he decides to eat nothing, well that’s fine too. But then this is it. No substitute, nothing to eat until the next designated snack time. Period. If he decides that asparagus is not to his liking, well, then he’ll just have to eat potatoes only. The next time we have asparagus there will be asparagus on his plate again. Interestingly he often then decides to eat the exact same food that he left over last time and to shun the potatoes.

It also helps that we eat everything. You know that children learn more through example than through your words, don’t you? And I have to tell you that I was a very picky eater as a child. And to be honest I still don’t like strawberries and raw tomatoes. Though I’m not allergic to them. So, when I’m at home I don’t eat them – mostly. When I am somewhere else and somebody makes strawberry cake I say thank you, smile and eat strawberry cake. I come from a family of picky eaters. My father doesn’t eat: rice, pasta, poultry, fish and innards. My mother doesn’t like mushy foods, peas, lentils and beans, anything with a strong taste (like brie), hot or spicy. My sister’s a vegetarian and doesn’t eat: eggplant, bell peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, and I don’t know what else. In addition to the strawberries and raw tomatoes I used to be a vegetarian too from the age of 18 to 29 and didn’t like celery.

Imagine cooking for that family. You make something like pasta bolognese and end up cooking potatoes too for my father and have your two children eating pasta with ketchup. Or you make something like bean soup and have three people eating bean soup (vegetarian bean soup) and one eating leftovers from the day before. My father doesn’t like vegetarian meals, when my mother wanted fish she had to make something else for the rest of the family, it took all the fun out of cooking. Interestingly even the people who clearly dislike certain foods will eat them when they are prepared differently. The on not eating peppers will like the vegetable quiche with bell peppers, the one not eating poultry will eat Tandoori chicken every day when in India, it’s all a bit mysterious. And every single one of them will at least try everything that my husband has cooked, because he is a formidable cook.

When I moved to Bavaria and started living alone, life became a culinary adventure. New kinds of pasta! Eggplant! Greek cheese! French cheese! Wow! Then we went on vacation in Italy, the whole family together and everything was just so delicious that I gave up being a vegetarian and started eating meat and fish again. Imagine having the whole menu to choose from! When you’re in a traditional German restaurant and you are a vegetarian you have actually about two or three choices: vegetables with a fried egg on top, Kasspatzen (which is a special kind of pasta with cheese), and Semmelknödel with mushrooms (not strictly vegetarian since there is broth in the sauce). In Bavaria especially they even have bits of ham in your vegetables, because obviously there has to be something in it to make it edible. So after ten years of that I started eating everything. I tried things I never ate before, seafood, exotic vegetables (garlic!), cheeses from all over the world, Italian salami, chick peas, Indian food, Greek food, Thai food… Marvelous.

My husband is not only a fabulous cook, he comes from a family where there are no picky eaters. None. Period. So we decided to make our son a non-picky eater. So far we have succeeded quite well, but I found out how this picky eating thing might have gone. When he started eating the same food as we there were often things that he obviously didn’t like. He left onions on his plate, he didn’t eat the outsides of his bell pepper, he didn’t like asparagus. And I found myself panicking, “Oh, he doesn’t like onions!” But I didn’t stop giving him onions to eat. Also we tried to introduce our son to every food we could imagine because I had read that all children get picky at age 3 to 8 or so. And right, for the last year or so he has started announcing that he doesn’t like this or that and wouldn’t eat it. This has become a little more since he started eating lunch at preschool because all they get there is traditional German cuisine. And pasta bolognese. But since we always respond with, “You can stay hungry if you want to.” he just eats. Sometimes he doesn’t eat his potatoes, sometimes he doesn’t eat his meat, sometimes he eats all the meat first and wants seconds, sometimes he eats only potatoes… All in all he gets a very rounded diet. Sometimes he eats only one or two bites, sometimes he eats more than me. His needs obviously are changing.

When we go to a restaurant he gets part of our dishes too. He may choose which one to have, but he can’t choose his food. We don’t have to order something special for him since restaurant portions are too big anyway and he doesn’t eat that much. One thing I found is that people seem to suggest to him that some foods might be unsuitable for a child. Like, “What? You’re eating FISH!” or “And when you’re going to an Indian restaurant, what do YOU eat?” Well, the same as Indian children I’d say. If it’s too hot he gets a little yoghurt stirred into the dish and more rice. My husband and I are a little jealous of him because our childhoods didn’t include olives, foreign cheese or even Chinese food. When we grew up pasta and pizza were considered exotic.

You might think that I’m only lucky and maybe I am, but I didn’t make this into a power struggle and I think this is key. You might also think that I wouldn’t have done this if my child were underweight, but you’re wrong. I recently found out that according to US growth charts my son would be considered seriously underweight. By German standards he is on the light side of the chart with no need to worry. My mother thinks he should gain weight because one can see his ribs sticking out. I think he is like me and like my husband’s brother, a skinny kid. Since he is healthy, growing, smart and active I don’t worry.

Technorati Tags: ,