james02s40
New member
First off, yes, the search function is great, and there are several great threads. I'm making this one because I'm at the point where I'm about to try and tell my wife that we just absolutely cannot do it, and I feel terrible.
It's the usual story, I suppose: she's a very social person and really likes to "get out there and have fun", which is awesome. I want my kids to be like that. But right now, it just seems completely impossible to go feed them at a restaurant, or really anywhere outside the house. "Impossible" as in, it will unavoidably result in a failure to deliver sufficient nutrients, to say nothing of the embarrassing chaos we would bring anywhere we go.
They're fraternal boys, one of whom is a Chunkyman™ in the 95th percentile for height and weight, while the other is much smaller, in the 25th-ish percentile for weight. I know they're not the same, and that's normal, and I know the 25th percentile is fine, but still, I worry all the time about the little guy eating enough and getting enough nutrients. There are questions every day of whether he ate enough, from both of us and our sitters / relatives, and it makes me incredibly anxious. He's just not a good eater. These days I'm of the mind that he just needs the time and space to make it happen. "If it takes three hours, then it takes three hours" has been my motto as of late. Whatever it takes for him to be getting what he needs.
We've gone to restaurants before, and it's been chaotic but workable, but now their personalities are starting to show and they're becoming harder to manage. So, tonight we try this Mexican food joint, and... man. I give him small pieces of carne asada, he nibbles on one and rejects all the others. I give him little pieces of tomato and cheese and beans and rice, he nibbles and then rejects. We then move on to what should work, peanut butter crackers and cheerios, but at this point we've been there 30 minutes, I'm trying eat, my wife is trying to eat and feed the other kid, there are a million distractions and nothing is landing. By now their noise output is filling the entire restaurant, both kids have destroyed the table and the floor below it, the voice inside my head is screaming "THIS KID ABSOLUTELY MUST EAT FOOD RIGHT NOW", and I feel like I'm on the verge of a total freakout.
So, I do a little freakout. I hastily start packing up while my wife is still eating, who at this points is clearly pissed at me. We help clean up (literally swept and wiped the table down), and I throw everything in the bottom of the stroller and bounce with the quickness, just super anxious and pissed off at the sheer absurdity of ever even trying anything like this. Like, why? WHY?
The ride home is totally silent and my wife is pretty mad. She's still mad at me. I'm not asking for help with my relationship (we'll be fine, really), but I feel totally cornered. My littler son HAS TO EAT. Trying to do that anywhere but inside the house just seems like a phenomenally, obviously stupid idea, but I don't want to shut my wife down when she has ideas like this. I want to be able to go out and have fun, and I want my wife to be happy. But you know what I want way, way more than that? For my son to get all the nutrients he needs, at least three times a day, every single day, for the rest of his life.
Sorry for sounding anxious, but I really am. It's also triggering in that I feel like my own physical development was messed up because my parents didn't really concern themselves with my nutrition from like age 8 on, and I'm dead set on not doing that. So, am I just a crazy person? Should I find a place of Zen within myself and just tough it out in those times? Because, honestly, I've gotten to the point where the alternative is just saying "no" to my wife every single time she wants to go somewhere during meal time, which would almost certainly break her heart.
EDIT: I need to say thanks to all the responses. I really appreciate them, and I feel bad I can't really respond to each as much as I should. I hear everyone about my anxiety... I'm not an overly anxious person in general, but certain things about fatherhood definitely push me into a different mode. I really want to do things right, and make sure the kids have everything they need, and maybe when I feel like that's being threatened I just sort of freak out. I'll find someone to talk about it with. Thank you everybody.
It's the usual story, I suppose: she's a very social person and really likes to "get out there and have fun", which is awesome. I want my kids to be like that. But right now, it just seems completely impossible to go feed them at a restaurant, or really anywhere outside the house. "Impossible" as in, it will unavoidably result in a failure to deliver sufficient nutrients, to say nothing of the embarrassing chaos we would bring anywhere we go.
They're fraternal boys, one of whom is a Chunkyman™ in the 95th percentile for height and weight, while the other is much smaller, in the 25th-ish percentile for weight. I know they're not the same, and that's normal, and I know the 25th percentile is fine, but still, I worry all the time about the little guy eating enough and getting enough nutrients. There are questions every day of whether he ate enough, from both of us and our sitters / relatives, and it makes me incredibly anxious. He's just not a good eater. These days I'm of the mind that he just needs the time and space to make it happen. "If it takes three hours, then it takes three hours" has been my motto as of late. Whatever it takes for him to be getting what he needs.
We've gone to restaurants before, and it's been chaotic but workable, but now their personalities are starting to show and they're becoming harder to manage. So, tonight we try this Mexican food joint, and... man. I give him small pieces of carne asada, he nibbles on one and rejects all the others. I give him little pieces of tomato and cheese and beans and rice, he nibbles and then rejects. We then move on to what should work, peanut butter crackers and cheerios, but at this point we've been there 30 minutes, I'm trying eat, my wife is trying to eat and feed the other kid, there are a million distractions and nothing is landing. By now their noise output is filling the entire restaurant, both kids have destroyed the table and the floor below it, the voice inside my head is screaming "THIS KID ABSOLUTELY MUST EAT FOOD RIGHT NOW", and I feel like I'm on the verge of a total freakout.
So, I do a little freakout. I hastily start packing up while my wife is still eating, who at this points is clearly pissed at me. We help clean up (literally swept and wiped the table down), and I throw everything in the bottom of the stroller and bounce with the quickness, just super anxious and pissed off at the sheer absurdity of ever even trying anything like this. Like, why? WHY?
The ride home is totally silent and my wife is pretty mad. She's still mad at me. I'm not asking for help with my relationship (we'll be fine, really), but I feel totally cornered. My littler son HAS TO EAT. Trying to do that anywhere but inside the house just seems like a phenomenally, obviously stupid idea, but I don't want to shut my wife down when she has ideas like this. I want to be able to go out and have fun, and I want my wife to be happy. But you know what I want way, way more than that? For my son to get all the nutrients he needs, at least three times a day, every single day, for the rest of his life.
Sorry for sounding anxious, but I really am. It's also triggering in that I feel like my own physical development was messed up because my parents didn't really concern themselves with my nutrition from like age 8 on, and I'm dead set on not doing that. So, am I just a crazy person? Should I find a place of Zen within myself and just tough it out in those times? Because, honestly, I've gotten to the point where the alternative is just saying "no" to my wife every single time she wants to go somewhere during meal time, which would almost certainly break her heart.
EDIT: I need to say thanks to all the responses. I really appreciate them, and I feel bad I can't really respond to each as much as I should. I hear everyone about my anxiety... I'm not an overly anxious person in general, but certain things about fatherhood definitely push me into a different mode. I really want to do things right, and make sure the kids have everything they need, and maybe when I feel like that's being threatened I just sort of freak out. I'll find someone to talk about it with. Thank you everybody.