I Have a Dream

A friend of mine not only makes all her meals from scratch but also uses ingredients she steps outside to harvest. I’m in awe. I love her too much for jealousy but have to laugh. I admire her! I highly approve! But truthfully, I have no grid.

I do have a dream.

Yes – I have a dream where the whole family gathers for great food, family bonding, and lively conversation on a regular basis. The “family- dinner-concept” was fostered by my mother, who grew up in Germany and was raised with European formalities and disciplines. My mother was a woman who knew how to host a formal dinner party with grace and good conversation that people really enjoyed. She would sit with perfect posture holding her fork in her left hand, prongs down, and knife in her right hand to delicately scoop food in small morsels onto her fork. She would lean forward from the waist and delicately place the morsels in her mouth, chewing well and gracefully swallowing. It was more like ballet than eating. Before my mother passed on, she taught my children table manners, proper posture, and how to set a formal dinner table.

This is a distant memory. The kids remember being taught, rather fondly, as they shovel food in their mouths with all sorts of funky postures. I have had to pick my battles.

I have 3 lovely, amazing, but very different children – two older daughters and one son, the youngest. All of them love to eat. However, all of them have very opinionated ideas of what they will or will not eat. My eldest daughter was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and my son was diagnosed with mild Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Because very limited, brand-specific eating preferences are common with both diagnoses, both went through a year of “feeding therapy”. This involved a daily ritual of desensitizing with regards to color, texture, and shape.

Initially, there were some very minimal results. Feeding Therapy office visits were weekly. After a full year, however, they both sprung back into previous rigid preferences with no improvement. After that personal fiasco, I literally resorted to praying nutrients into their highly limited, processed diets and for “real food” expansion. Fortunately, with standing in faith over time, preferences have expanded and all my children are very healthy. It’s quite miraculous.

At the suggestion of one “expert”, I tried the “I am going to win this battle” approach one time, and one time only, with my beautiful eldest, Veronica. She was about 5 at the time; I made a kid favorite – spaghetti. However, she flatly refused to eat it. So, over the next 24 hours, I served her the same dish over and over as instructed.

The look of pure stubbornness on my daughter’s face grew more and more intense by the hour. The plate got more and more dried out – it was losing its starch – its will, so to speak.

My daughter’s face became more and more set like flint. The kid literally did not eat solids all day.

Mom cried in the bathroom.

Finally, at 9 pm, with no solid nourishment, I pitched the plate and served another preferred item in the name of preservation – hers and mine. Pick your battles, mom.

I once heard a tale (with autism you hear many) of a fabulous supplement that just happened to cost $80 a bottle. However, you needed a lot of this miracle powder to work. It was heat stable, so I devised a brilliant sneak attack. The Trojan horse came in the form of my son’s favorite brownies.

I ran the brownie suggestion by my little boy, who enthusiastically approved. I ingeniously put the whole colorless, odorless, tasteless $80 can in the delicious pre-approved brownies, complete with frosting and sprinkles. It was beautiful! I was ready to celebrate my genius. Very casually I informed my son his favorite brownies were done. He ran enthusiastically toward those beckoning brownies. But all of a sudden, he screeched to an abrupt halt 2 feet away. He literally shook in fear and ran away. My crest fell.

I fed the $80 brownies to my daughters who loved them.

The dream of “family dinners” is not happening – at least for now.

But God is big. Hope springs eternal and is well-founded because He is Love and He is so faithful. I’ve been amazed at how the kids’ eating preferences have expanded. And, our family is pretty close-knit, barring teen dynamics. Apparently, we are doing well despite the lack of family dinners!