I am really not a model parent in so many ways. I'm often impatient and much too often raise my voice (sounds nicer than "scream at my kids"). I have a hard time getting my kids to be consistent about their chores because I'm not consistent in demanding they do them. (I make too many exceptions - "she's tired", "she has so much homework.") My parenting skills are a work in progress and I know it.  

However, there is one aspect of parenting I'm pretty good at, simply because I don't tolerate nonsense (this in my opinion is a key ingredient to good parenting) and that is getting my daughters to eat healthy food. Here's how:

1) I eat well (or in modern psycho- babble -I model healthy eating).  

2) I serve healthy food to the whole family.  

3) I don't tolerate nonsense. Now I realize I've used the word "nonsense" a couple of times and I'd better explain what it means in connection with children and eating. One example of nonsense is your child demanding you exchange the healthy food on their plate that you've just spent precious time cooking, for some kind of food in the refrigerator that they prefer. For instance, "I don't want broccoli, fish and rice; I want bagel with jam." To which my reply is an unimaginative: "We're having broccoli, fish and rice for dinner, not bagel with jam, so please eat what I've given you."  

If the protesting continues, the rebel is allowed to go play, but she's told she won't get anything to eat during the evening besides what's left on her plate. When my children were smaller and our acquaintance was short, they couldn't believe that anyone, especially not the woman randomly assigned to be their mother, could be so hard-hearted; to prove the point, I left their meal out, so that when an hour later they were predictably hungry, they had to eat cold broccoli, fish and rice, or whatever. Eventually, they realized that truly no bagel with jam would materialize later in the evening and they began to appreciate a warm dinner. Now there is rarely a lone plate with eerily congealing food on the counter.

If you are not a parent, what I do sounds so very obvious, so ridiculously clear, that you wonder why I'm even typing any of this onto the screen. If you are a parent, you know why. You know that unlike earlier generations of parents, this generation of middle-class parents has a really hard time holding down the line, or holding up standards. We're over-worked, tired, and we all bought into some notion about kids having more self-determination that we had.

We have, mistakenly, I think, assumed that a lot of our problems were born of an overly-dogmatic upbringing. We were going to allow our kids choices, not force decisions on them. We were going to, once and for all, lay to rest whatever vestiges existed of 19th century strictness -of children being ordered and commandeered -that still  lingered in our youth.  

Get around a group of toddlers and their moms and you're bound to hear kids being overwhelmed by options: "Do you want the pink straw, the yellow straw, the blue straw, the purple straw or the rainbow straw?" "Do you want to put on the Barbie rain jacket, the Hello Kitty jacket or the Care Bears jacket?" "Do you want to eat carrots or bread sticks?" (Guess which the kid chooses).  

Then, when your kid hits four or so and won't do anything you ask him to do, you want to alternately either kill him or yourself. For instance, you say, "Please pick up your toys," and your child says, "No, I want to pick up my clothes." Unfortunately, the living room is strewn with toys, not clothes. Suddenly, the light goes on and you realize your mother, who was cringing during the years of endless choice-offering, who tried in a gentle (or not so gentle) way to tell you that occasionally needed to exercise more control over your child's life, was right. You have created the four-year old who acts like a fourteen-year old, who believes that he can determine exactly what he needs to do, including what he does or doesn't need to eat. Now you've got at least two years of correction ahead of you. (If you're lucky, it's only two years.  I hear it's good to finish before she really does turn fourteen.)

Just as you thought your child knew what he needed for his psychological well-being (today the yellow straw would make him happy) you also, perhaps with more reason, assumed that he would be well enough connected to his physical needs to know that a bread stick was in order and not a carrot. That would be true, just as it is for adults, if the child's body had not been corrupted by too many of the wrong foods.  

So if you were able to keep white flour, white sugar, food coloring and other contaminants away from your child, he would probably know what he needed. Before the age of two or so, this is actually possible. But who are we kidding;  in this world, to keep your kids food-longings pure is an impossibility. Unless you are homesteading in the middle of Montana, you are not the only source of food for your children. At my daughter's pre-school vanilla wafers, goldfish and pretzels abound at snack time. All are made with white flour and are either too deliciously sweet or salty.  My older daughter sees her friends bring lunchables to school and wants the same. If we happen to stay after school so that they can both play on the apparatus, they want to buy the after-school snacks that are offered - pizza and popsicles. After dance class, the teacher hands out lollipops in my younger daughter's class.  

Our children are surrounded by a world of bad food, which means that even if in your own house the choices are healthy, they've had enough of the bad stuff that that's what they crave. This is why you can’t trust them to know which food their bodies really need, which is why they should eat what you serve them. 

There's another reason, of course, too. Unless you're fabulously wealthy and have a full-time cook on staff there is no way a normal mother will find the time or energy to cook to each family member's individual orders. At one point, though, she will try. After a few weeks she will realize that she can't make scrambled eggs for one kid and hamburger patties for another while cooking vegetables for herself and her husband that she knows her kids won't eat. Grocery shopping and cooking become a nightmare even for a small family.  

When you've gone through that stage and realize that you value yourself more than that -that in order to bring up your kids in a 21st century way, you are not willing to create a 19th century life of enslavement to home and family for yourself -- there are three choices left to you: 1) You keep bread, pasta, apples (or whatever the kids' favorites are) constantly on hand and your children eat a diet consisting of 3-5 foods that you rotate while you and your husband partake of a balanced diet, 2) You and your husband eat kid food constantly (those 3-5 foods I mentioned)  3) You cook healthy meals and every one eats them.  

The no-nonsense option is three. Amazingly, the result of option three is that my kids often even ask for fruit and vegetables when it's time to snack. It also means that they now never refuse dark rye bread in the morning (granted, it is spread with honey) or multi-grain hot cereal. Their taste buds have been educated so that they accept flavors most people assume don't appeal to kids.   

To encourage them to eat healthy foods they shop with me at the Farmer's Market every week so they can pick out some of the fruit and vegetables they particularly like. (Okay, okay, they also get to pick out the kind of bagel they want for lunch on Farmer's Market day - yeah, mostly they don't pick out the pumpernickel bagel, but the bagel-of-choice is usually followed with a big pile of fresh strawberries).

Of course kids should have some choices, but the choices have to be managed -do you want an apple or a carrot, is better than do you want a carrot or a bread stick. So has my struggle ended? Do we never have food fights? Ask the embarrassed shoppers who witnessed my daughter crying for a gogurt a few days ago at Vons. She ended up with a Horizon organic yogurt (which she enjoyed thoroughly) but not until she'd made everyone in the store aware of her demand and had a few sharp words from me. I could see people wonder whether to be sympathetic to my plight or to call Child Protective Services.  

I'm swimming against the tide, which is why my daughter even knows about gogurts (or why gogurts even exist). The subversive models are legion. One girl who comes to visit my youngest regularly won't eat anything but white toast with cream cheese and apples. She's only at my house a few hours a week, so she knows she can refuse the other things I offer and still survive.  

(Before I came to my senses, I actually tried to satisfy her dietary desires. I thought I had to do for a guest what I wouldn't do for my own children.)  My daughter sees her holding out for what she wants and tries to do the same that night at dinner. So the struggle continues and I assume will continue for years. Does that mean I should cave in? I've already half given up on my kids doing chores consistently, but that at least doesn't affect their health. Do we want to read more about overweight children, children with high blood pressure and a host of other childhood ills that didn't exist when I was growing up, and which, by the way, we all pay for in higher insurance premiums and public health subsidies?

Bottom line: diet nonsense is expensive in lots of ways. If we all hold the line, our little rebels won't be able to breech it to get to the gogurts.