Dilemma

Matt and I faced a new parenting dilemma tonight.

See, we had roast for supper. A big 'ol chuck roast with potatoes and carrots and onions cooking slowly in the crock pot all day. The kind that smells the entire house up with it's comforting aroma.

Then we sat down for supper.

As Luke spit the first bite of roast out and then continued to move his carrots, potatoes and meat from one section of his plate to another, Matt and I reminisced.

We reminisced about when we were little. And our moms made roast. And we wanted to cry. See, we both HATED it. That comforting aroma I mentioned, that is now that I am 27. 20 years ago the smell made me dread supper. Not just a "oh yuck, roast" sort of way, but in a way that I can still vividly remember almost being sick thinking about having to eat it.

And then the flood of memories came back.

Crying at the table because I hated it. Chewing and chewing and chewing and it never fully dissolving away. I couldn't swallow it because I would gag on the dryness of it (probably wasn't that dry, just that I had already sucked all the juices out of it by chewing it so much). Mom telling me to eat it with ketchup. But I was never a ketchup kid...only with french fries...not meat that has sat on my plate for 40 minutes. Lukewarm meat with cold ketchup. Gross. So I would again chew and chew and chew and then take a big gulp of milk hoping to rinse it down. And to my horror, not all of it would go down. So I would do it again. And again. And then my glass was empty and my parents refused to give me a seventh glass of milk until I ate my roast. Sometimes I could sneak it from my mouth into a napkin. Just a little bit, but hey, it was a little bit less I had to swallow. Those nights I thought I was going to die.

Please understand I am not exaggerating. I have very few bad memories of being a kid. Eating roast though, is one of them.

So back to our dilemma. What do we do about Luke and his supper? Is it just a right of passage that you force your kids to eat roast? Since we're the parents now is that what we're SUPPOSED to do? Is that just a part of being a kid that you have to deal with? Like skinned knees and early bedtimes? Anybody know????

So in our parental wisdom...we offered him ketchup. And he ate it. Just the ketchup, not the roast.

Since the lingering memories of our youth were still fresh to us (and since we're still not crazy of roast ourselves) we let the little guy off the hook. I hope he understands someday just how much we love him.