Welcome to Day 2 of my family dinner photo journal!
Today on the menu was a teriyaki baked salmon, roasted yams and a spinach salad with candied nuts and canned mandarins. As I knew that my kids my like the candied nuts and mandarins, but maybe not the salad, I left some of the salad toppings off on the side so they could choose to have those foods too. Here comes the uncensored part: My husband had taken the kids out to McDonald’s over the weekend with his mom for a mother’s day lunch, so we also had some left-over McDonald’s nuggets and I hate to let food go to waste, so there were also McDonald’s Chicken Nuggets on offer.
As I mentioned in my day 1 post, my kids are also allowed to take whatever is left over from their lunches and put that on the table too. So you can see that one of my kid’s plate already has some cereal on it. The cereal comes from their out-of-school program, where each day they are given an after school snack. Depending on what time we pick them up, sometimes that snack comes home with us and if it does, will make its way onto the dinner table too.
Child One’s Plate – Before and After
Will you be surprised to hear that the nuggets were a hit? Probably not, and those definitely got eat and refilled until our whole supply ran out. The canned mandarins were also among the first foods to go. But you can also see that he had some of the salmon, nuts and salad too.
Child Two’s Plate – Before and After
Again the nuggets and mandarins were a hit. He also ate most of his dried cereal from out of school care. He ate a bit of his left over apple slices from lunch, a bit of the candied nuts and the yams.
So what?
Our dinner last night was enjoyed by our whole family. My kids were offered a variety of healthy and “unhealthy” foods and they choose from these foods what they wanted. I neither praised nor reprimanded regardless of what they choose from what was offered. Do I wish that they ate the salmon and turned their noses up at the nuggets? Sure! But I also know that in as a little as 4 years my older child, he could take himself to McDonald’s and buy his own nuggets so I want him to know how to include these foods as part of an over-arching healthy diet. So hopefully while the perfectionist-dietitian in me can’t help but feel some shame for sharing that there were nuggets on my table, the realistic-dietitian in me knows that I am teaching my kids good skills for how to navigate their food environments once I no longer control it.
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