Tales From the Table.

Kimberly admits she's not much of a cook. She's more of a heat-up-a-frozen-dinner mom. But one night she decided to make corn chowder and grilled cheese sandwiches, from scratch, for supper. She spent what seemed like hours slaving over a hot stove, congratulating herself on what a good mother and wife she was, preparing such a feast for her family.

Her 5-year-old son, Ben, didn't even make it into his chair before the complaining started. He stared at the table as if it contained nuclear waste and shouted, "There's nothing I can eat here! I hate all this?"

With what Kimberly considered the epitome of restraint she managed to maneuver him into a chair, but before she could pat herself on the back, the bartering started. "How much of this have I got to eat before I can have dessert?" Ben demanded.

It's a litany familiar to every parent who has ever placed food on the dining room table. Boundaries must be clearly defined before any actual mastication has begun. Exactly how much, down to the last bite, the exact number of peas, or the level of soup in the bowl, must be consumed before the dessert reward is bestowed.

Kimberly told me later that she ended up making Ben a peanut butter and jelly sandwich so he could fulfill his dinner requirements and go directly to dessert. The whole process left her drained and frustrated. On top of that she felt guilty that he wasn't eating properly, but helpless to make any positive changes.

Kids are notoriously picky eaters. One day at lunch my friend Kirsten's son,. Louis, peeked into his peanut butter and jelly sandwich suspiciously and asked, "What kind of jelly is that?" and then declared, "I eat only strawberry jelly."

Rebecca has a different approach. When I served her daughter, Bethany, a dish that included black beans (which I found out later that Bethany disliked), Rebecca was mortified when she wouldn't eat. She demanded that Bethany finish everything on her plate, made her apologize to me for saying she didn't like it, and reported the incident to her husband, who also was livid about it. "I was so embarrassed she did that," Rebecca told me.

Clearly, the table is a battleground where parents set the stakes and kids pound them into the ground. This has caused more than one parent to retreat in utter defeat, settling for unhealthy eating patterns. The good news is that there is really no battle to be fought at all! Kids use food to test their boundaries. In reality, no controversy exists.

It works like this. Little Jimmy sits down at the table. In front of him is a nutritious meal. Jimmy starts the obligatory complaining, "Yuck! I won't eat this."

Mom and Dad smile sweetly at Jimmy and say, "That's OK, but you must sit at the table during dinner. That's our family time. When dinner is over, you can go play." When dinner is finished, Jimmy's plate (assuming he hasn't eaten his dinner) is wrapped up and put away until the next meal. You can be sure of one thing. Eventually Jimmy will eat. There isn't a child in the United States (or anywhere else, for that matter) who has starved to death with food in front of them.

The second dinner problem, bartering, is solved when you take away the dessert "prize." Children are free to eat or not eat from an array of nutritious food. When dessert is out of the picture, children lose their bargaining position, and parents can only win. You might consider offering dessert once a week, as something special, perhaps for the weekend. In time your tales from the table will no longer be horror stories. They will all end "nutritiously ever after."

Celeste perrino Walker and her children eat everything that is put in front of them at her home in Rutland, Vermont.