How strict are you with food??

Oh boy - Jason is back at work and I'm back to parenting on my own again.  He had some use-it-or-lose-it vacation time to use and took off all last week.  I milked it!!  Sleeping in, baths, naps, not having to get up off the couch to get anything, etc.  It was a glorious long week and we enjoyed every minute of it.

But now that he is back at work and I don't have someone to laugh with when both kids throw tantrums at exactly the same time, I have a question for you moms out there: When your child does not eat, do you prepare them something else to eat?  If not, are you a snacking family where they can snack at some point to keep the hunger at bay?  

We had a literal stand-off between me and the kids today.  They wouldn't eat their scrambled eggs for breakfast.

I don't know why.  We have never had a problem with eggs before!  It wasn't like I laced the eggs with spinach and mushrooms.  It was straight eggs!!

And I wasn't that worried about Elena, she hasn't been eating much lately.  But Leo has had a very health appetite recently.  I even had two pieces of jelly bread ready and waiting to serve to them if they ate their eggs.  I also had them dressed and ready to go so we could go to the Chick-Fil-A playplace after breakfast!  They knew the rule - finish your eggies and we'll go play.  Not even THAT worked!!

Leo even made up a song when we were doing clean-up (with my grabber-tool!!!) that ended with,

"...and I wouldn't eat my eeggggiiiiiiieeeesssss!!"  

It was pretty funny.  I sent mixed messages by laughing at his little jingle, but still told him he should eat his eggs.  It was all fun and games until about 10:30 am.  That was when both kids started to hit hysteria from being hungry.  We do not snack around here since snacking eliminates their appetites completely and lunch was at least an hour away.

From 10:30 to 11:00 I tried to convince them to eat the eggs.  They refused so I just dropped it.  Lots of tears, time-outs and tantrums later, I tossed the eggs and we finally arrived at lunch.  (Needless to say, they didn't get their jelly-bread and they didn't get to go to Chick-Fil-A.)

Here is the thing though - I hear lots of moms say, "Either they eat what I put in front of them, or they go hungry."

But do these moms really let their kid go hungry???  Because the true punishment is on the parent when the child is in a state of hunger-induced hysteria.  My only guess is that these children are allowed snacks in between meals.  My kids can't eat snacks AND meals and we waste a lot of food if snacks are constant.  I hate wasting food - especially protein-rich eggs that should set them on the right path for lots of playtime all day!!

So, what do you do?  Are you as strict as me?  Or do you start getting strict when they hit a certain age?  If your kids decided to boycott eggs, what would you do???