A Battle of Wills

Over and over again, I work to make a nice balanced dinner, which my children then reject. Bethany's definitely the worst. Meagan is learning to branch out and try new things (she actually likes broccoli, and even tried squash the other day), but Bethany has a very limited palate. Last night I just got tired of her refusing to eat, and refusing to eat stuff that I know she normally likes, and told her that she wasn't leaving her chair until she ate at least one piece of the breaded chicken I made, and one piece of broccoli. She did taste the broccoli fairly quickly. Of course, she grimaced and nearly spit it out, but at least she tried it. The chicken, on the other hand, was a different story.

I just don't get it. How exactly is breaded chicken different from chicken nuggets. She has no problem eating those. So why is what I made any different? She does like "clean" chicken--or completely plain with nothing on it chicken (I guess chicken nuggets are the exception). So I figured that was why she wasn't eating it, and scraped off all the breaded stuff. It still wasn't good enough. She didn't make a big fuss at first about having to sit in her chair, but then the longer it went on, the more upset she got, until she was screaming and crying that she "can't stay in the kitchen for a long, long time," and yelling "Never, never!" at me when I told her all she had to do was eat one little piece, and then she could leave. Sheesh. I kind of ignored her and did some dishes for a while, while she sat and cried. Nate tried to reason with her and bribe her with a cookie or game time on the Wii. Finally I sat down to talk to her and asked her why she wouldn't eat it. She said there was still stuff on it. I asked if I washed it, if she would eat it and she said yes. So I actually speared her bite of chicken, took it to the sink, ran it under some water and brought it back. She immediately stuffed it in her mouth, chewed it up and said, "Yummy!" That crazy kid is going to drive me insane one of these days.