Division of Labor and little changes at home.

"Parents are responsible for what is presented to eat and the manner in which it is presented. Children are responsible for how much and even whether they eat." - Ellyn Satter

Ever since I picked up the book called "How To Get Your Kid To Eat...But Not Too Much," I have been a reformed mom. Reading the book, I realized how mealtimes have become unpleasant, high pressure events for Zoe. "Yum, Yum!" I would chant. The spoon was always hovering about ready to be thrust into her mouth. Sometimes I sneaked a spoonful of food in as she opened her mouth to nibble on the bread at hand. How I cheered when she took the food. All these, alas, according to the book's author, Ellyn Satter, were pressuring tactics. And even though I knew I have to give her control of how much she consumed, as instructed by pediatricians like Dr. Brazelton, I often tried to get Zoe to take that "one more bite." And of course, the more I tried, the more she resisted. And, of course, the more she resisted by refusing to eat, the more anxious I became and the more I tried to get her to eat by persuasion or coercion, both of which never did work.

So, following the core advise of the book, I've forsworn trying to get Zoe to eat more and instead to trust that she will eat what she needs. I knew this of course, but it was hard to implement given the fact that Zoe is on the small side (even for an Asian). Anyhow, this may have been important before, it is especially important now that Zoe is at the stage where she wants to assert herself as a separate person. So, I am responsible for providing her with healthy, nutritious (and hopefully tasty) food in small to moderate quantities. She can decide how much she wants to eat, if any. And baby can ask for more if she wants more. It's been quite wonderful not having struggles (overt or covert) at mealtimes. I am more relaxed. Zoe seems to be happy with mommy's new mentality. She seems to be eating better. Just the other day, much to my delight, she demolished the cantaloupe I cut up for her. No urging needed. I simply put the pieces on her tray and then proceeded to eat my portion.

Another change we adopted (or are adopting) is eating together as a family. Except for breakfast, Zoe's mealtimes used to come before ours. That came about because we had to spoon feed her before, which was a full time job. Now that she is feeding herself and seems to want to eat what we eat, and now that we are adopting a more hands off attitude towards her eating, we decided it is time to partake meals together. This means a very early dinner - 6 pm at the latest. This is great as early dinners are better from the health standpoint and leaves us more time in the evening after Zoe has been put to bed to do other things. This also means that dinner preparation must be done by me while Zoe takes her afternoon nap. In short, not a whole lot of rest time in the afternoon for me. Also, no more dinner preparation as a couple activity in the evening. Dennis and I promised ourselves that we would do the long, lingering dinner preparations together on the weekends.