Strawberries.
One after another.
Is this my kid?
Almost as soon as he turned 1, my oldest son got P-I-C-K-Y when it came to fruits and veggies. For the past few years I’ve been mostly successful at getting him to eat carrots, brown pears, apples and (to a lesser degree) peas. Hoping for consumption of most other produce was asking too much.
I tried to swallow my discouragement each time I watched my friends’ kids gobble up blueberries, raspberries, or watermelon while mine spat his out (if he even tried any of it in the first place) and asked for more meat or bread.
“It’s so great how he eats all that meat!” my friends would remark.
“Yes,” I’d agree, “it’s wonderful. A piece of broccoli or tomato every now and then would be nice, too, though.”
An experienced mom told me, “Just keep offering.”
So I did. With each meal of meat and carrot (or brown pears, or apples, or maybe peas), I’d offer some other fruit or vegetable. Part of me held onto a glimmer of hope that he’d at least try it, and maybe even like it, while the rest of me summoned up the strength to withstand another “YUCK!”
This went on for many meals until one day, a couple of months ago, he ate grapes. I assumed it was a fluke and said nothing. However, the next time I asked if he wanted grapes, he said yes.
Yes. YES!!!
It didn’t stop there. He recently ate not one but two helpings of butternut squash. The next time I offered it he only had two bites, but that doesn’t matter; he hadn’t had two bites in two years! A week ago he ate an entire bowl of soup with kale in it. He even said, “The kale is good.” And tonight, the strawberries. One, after another, after another. Who would have thought?
Apparently I thought it possible, or I would not have kept offering. As moms, we get quite adept at anticipating problems and bracing ourselves for them, but at the same time, we get really good at maintaining faith, hope, and optimism in spite of them. Even though sometimes we feel like nothing we do is working, we know to keep trying, because each day we are blessed with little rewards for our hard work. When my baby shows that he can understand and use words, I know that our efforts to teach him language mattered. When our oldest son uses coping strategies to handle frustrating situations, I know that it’s partly because we’ve worked hard to help him do that. So while we’re not having the greatest success promoting sharing these days, we keep at it, because we know that someday it will be better.
My kids teach me daily that we all have the capacity to be better, so when I make one of my many mommy mistakes, I maintain faith in myself, knowing that I will be better, too. We learn lessons in our weaker moments and with patience and time we improve. How grateful I am to be able to face each day, each meal, and each weak moment with that optimism.
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