It Is the Only Thing He Will Eat

Tonight we are making plain pasta with butter and cheese, and there is one small thing going beside it, and nobody is required to eat that thing.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Put a pot of water on and salt it properly. Cook whatever shape is the accepted one in your house, and do not substitute the shape, because in this situation the shape is not a detail. Keep a mug of the cooking water. Drain the pasta, put it back in the warm pot off the heat, and add a generous piece of butter, a splash of the water, and a handful of grated cheese. Stir it hard until it turns glossy and coats every piece rather than sitting in a puddle at the bottom. Serve it. Then put one small thing on the side of the plate, a few carrot sticks or half a clementine or three peas, and say nothing about it at all. It feeds four, it costs almost nothing, and it takes eleven minutes.

Now, the reason I am writing is not the pasta.

It is what people say to you about it.

He will grow out of it if you stop giving in. You are making a rod for your own back. My children eat everything, we just never made a fuss. Have you tried hiding vegetables in the sauce.

You have heard all of it. Some of it from people you love. And you have nodded, and said something noncommittal, and gone home and cooked the pasta again, because the alternative on a Tuesday evening with a hungry, distressed child is not a parenting philosophy, it is a fight you do not have in you and that would not work anyway.

The verse about the pace of the flock

There is a line in Isaiah about how God moves people, and the detail in it is about speed.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. (Isaiah 40:11, King James Version)

Read the last clause. Those that are with young get led gently, which in a flock is not sentiment, it is logistics. A ewe with a lamb cannot move at the pace of the rest, and a shepherd who drives the whole flock at the fastest speed loses the slowest animals.

So the pace of the group gets set by the ones who cannot go faster. That is stated as good shepherding rather than as an indulgence.

And every person telling you to hold firm is telling you to move at the flock's average speed.

You are leading somebody at the pace they can actually go, and God has never once fed people at the speed of the fastest advice. Isaiah 40:11 makes gentleness toward the slow into the definition of good shepherding, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen at six in the evening.

You have not been giving in, and heaven has never once confused patience with weakness. It is written that He shall gently lead those that are with young, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the water is coming up.

Who the dinner is actually a problem for

Now let me be plain about something, because I think it will take weight off.

Right now, on a Tuesday, that dinner is not a problem for your child. He is fed, he is calm, he ate, and he will sleep.

It is not a problem for the household budget, because it is the cheapest thing on this entire site.

You are not making anything worse, and God has never once graded a parent on how fast a child came along. Isaiah 40:11 makes the gentle leading of the slowest into the definition of good shepherding, and the Holy Spirit is the one who sets a pace by who cannot go faster.

It is a problem for exactly two things: your anxiety about the future, and other people's opinions in the present. And neither of those is sitting at your table at six o'clock.

That does not mean nothing will ever change. Things do change, usually slowly, usually not because of a confrontation. But whatever is going to change is not going to change tonight, and tonight there is a hungry child and eleven minutes.

Four dinners a week of the same dish is not a verdict on a mother.

You are not making anything worse, and God has never once graded a parent by how fast a child came along. The passage sets the pace by the slowest rather than by the strongest, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates an evening's decision from a person's whole record.

You have kept that child fed and calm through something other people only have theories about. Isaiah 40 is a chapter about a God who carries rather than drives, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that in an ordinary kitchen on a Tuesday.

One thing beside it, with nothing attached

Here is the practical part, and the whole thing turns on one rule.

Put one small thing on the side of the plate. Something with no work in it. Three carrot sticks, half a clementine, a spoon of peas.

And say nothing about it. Not one word. No encouragement, no bargaining, no just try it, no comment when it comes back untouched, and no comment if it does not.

You are leading somebody at the speed they can go, and patience has never once been the same thing as giving in. The same Spirit who breathed Isaiah 40:11 is in this kitchen, and the written word there has lambs carried in the arm rather than driven from behind.

The reason is that food gets refused most reliably when it comes with a requirement attached, and a requirement does not have to be spoken to be felt. A child can hear a hopeful silence from across a room.

So the small thing goes on the plate every night, unremarked, for weeks or months, and it is genuinely fine if it never gets touched, and it is not a test and there is no score.

That is the whole method, and it is slower than everybody's advice and it does not create a fight at your table.

You are allowed to move slowly and quietly, and God has never once required a person to force something to prove they were serious. Isaiah 40:11 has lambs carried rather than driven, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes three carrot sticks with nothing attached into an entirely peaceful evening.