Seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year I plan a menu that includes home cooked meals, using fresh ingredients for me and my family to eat.  Five days out of each week my dinners suffer some form of rejection and/or abuse.

Take today for instance, while my children are sleeping I have prepared a dinner of steamed green beans and roasted cherry toms, marinated then grilled chicken breast, home made wedge potato chips and red cabbage coleslaw.  I am pretty sure we will have to bribe Minnie to finish half of her plate and Jackson won’t even let the majority of it anywhere near his mouth, then I will give up passing things to him and he will spend the rest of dinner time throwing food from either side of his high chair – that is the only point in the meal when he looks like he is really enjoying my food.

Weaning both my children has been a heartbreaking experience for this mum-who-likes-to-cook.  I am pretty sure my children have the smallest appetite possible for a child in the first 18 months of their lives.  Jackson had the potential of being quite the hungry baby, he’s a big boy but no, food is just a necessary evil in his view – this is not a Winney (maiden name) trait, we like our food (although as I type that I can’t think of one person in my immediate family that is not generally on a diet or obsessing about gym visitation). Still it’s not what I expected from my son.

I do have hope that he will change.  Minnie does at least have an appetite now.  Although this does have to be managed or her daily intake can be made up of only snacks fed on an hourly basis.

Nevertheless I am determined that my children will have a varied and healthy diet.  I will not give in and only offer pasta and certain kinds of cheese – there will be vegetables, there will be fruit, there will be fish!

Only 18 years and they can cook for themselves.