Peace with kids at mealtime!
May The Force NOT Be With You--

By: Desiri Wightman, RD, CD

Have you had any mealtime battles around your dinner table lately? You know the kind. You want Sarah to eat her carrots and she wails and whines and mopes and eventually throws them on the floor. You spend your entire meal battling with her, and while you eat your cold food, you wonder why researchers think family mealtime is such a good thing. After all, the only person you are conversing with is Sarah, and not in the friendliest of tones either.

Often power struggles over mealtime stem from the parent doing too much work! Yep, you read that right. You're taking on too much responsibility, and it's time to share the load. In the eating arena, both the parent and the child have individual responsibilities, and when the parent or child tries to do the other's work, toes get stepped on, making mealtime anything less than pleasant.

Parents Decide What; Children Decide How Much!

The parents' job is to be the gatekeeper. They decide what food will come into the home and to the table. They are responsible to know the basics of nutrition and what foods are manageable for children to eat. They also prepare and present the meal in a positive way. They regulate meal and snack times. They make mealtimes pleasant by setting limits and ensuring that behavior is polite. To summarize, parents' main mealtime job is to put food on the table and to monitor the environment.

Children are responsible for deciding whether they will eat the food and how much they will eat. That's it! This is the line that many parents cross. Have you recently told your child, "You can't leave the table until you take 3 more bites!"? The battle begins for you've just sailed into the FORCE.

The FORCE is never where you want to be. Mealtime battles ensue as your "eat- everything-on-your-plate battleship" strikes your child's "ship of autonomy." She fires back at you, telling you to move out of her territory so she can prove that she is capable of making good food decisions from the wonderful assortment you provide. Remember, you do have the upper hand in that you get to decide what nutritious foods to offer. Scrap your battleship and let your child explore the delightful world of food within the bounds you've set. Following is a list of ten tips to help you sail smoothly away from the FORCE:
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Storing Leftovers

Unclutter your cupboards by using your empty Mason or mayonnaise jars to store leftovers. When you open your refrigerator you'll see exactly what needs to be eaten and thus prevent the growth of green fuzzies. Better yet, unlike plastic containers, food odors won't linger around the jars. And the final plus, jars are always dishwasher safe and will come out sparkling and sanitized for another use!

* DVO welcomes your kitchen hints and cooking or nutrition questions! Email us and we'll post your hints and Q/A's in upcoming newsletters! *
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Chicken Broccoli Cheese Braid

Try this recipe as another way to get your 5-a-day. Even friends who don't like broccoli ate double portions of this delightful meal. Serve with oven baked potato chips, veggie sticks and dip, or a potato salad for a complete meal.

Chicken Broccoli Cheese Braid

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The easiest camping trip ever!

In February, my husband came home from work and told me, "We're going camping!" I stared blankly at him and then outside at the drizzling rain. He quickly suggested that we turn off all the lights, eat our meal on paper plates and by candlelight, and set up the tent in the living room. Excitedly, we did just that.

We used flashlights and candlelight to light our apartment, and even turned the heat down to simulate the outdoors. Our toddler reveled in jumping through the tent door onto our bed of sleeping bags, foam, and pillows. We sang campfire songs and read stories to our ecstatic child. While playing Yatzhee and eating popcorn, the die came up missing. Our son's cheeks, overflowing with "popcorn" soon gave way to a run of 4 slobbery dice. As you can imagine, the memory of that night will be with me forever. Best of all, we didn't have walk to an outhouse in the middle of the night or serve burnt "fire" pancakes in the morning! And with no dust or pine needles trekked into the tent, clean up was a breeze. I didn't even get one mosquito bite!

So, this summer, when bad weather threatens to rain you out of a family camping trip, don't despair, and don't pack! Instead, go on the easiest camping trip ever, right inside your living room.
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Win a digital camera!

An Agfa ePhoto 780 digital camera is patiently waiting to snap the pictures of one clever family, and your family could become its focus! The family that submits the best idea for an activity in our Family-Fun Times Contest, will be snapping digital pictures of their camping, boating, or lazy summer days and sending them via email to friends and family around the globe.

The last day to submit entries is June 15, 2000, so start brainstorming with your family tonight and share your cleverness with others. All great ideas will be posted in next month's newsletter, so that other families can make this summer unforgettable too! (If you need to jump-start your brain, read the Family Fun-Times section above for ideas.)

We'll narrow the entries to the three most creative and choose a grand prize winner to receive the digital camera, a 1st runner-up to receive Cook'n 2000, and a 2nd runner-up to receive a set of recipe cards. (All prizes can be exchanged for their value in money, if desired.)

Click here to submit your idea and write your activity in the text message box.

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* Interested in more handy kitchen tips, recipes, and jokes? We'll gladly send you fresh ideas for food and laughter once a week in our Cook'n Weekly newsletter. Click here to sign up for your free subscription.

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* A special thank you to all 65,213 of you who have signed our petition for a family-safe internet. Our petition asks the eight major search engines to allow us our freedom NOT to view links to pornographic web sites if we so choose, enabling families to create a safe internet-viewing experience.

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