Sometimes I feel like I live in my kitchen., On the weekends when everyone is home, the kitchen becomes the main hub. We all flock there at different times during the day to eat, but always come together at night for dinner as a family.
It’s a good thing I like to cook because I’m constantly at the stove. I like to peruse cookbooks and the internet for new recipes to keep meals interesting. My kitchen, you could say, is always open. Not that I necessary want it be. It just has to be for the very fact that I have two teenagers.
Food and teenagers seem to go hand in hand these days. It’s become a popular topic of discussion between my husband and I. We can’t seem to understand the eating habits of our two teens during the week.
Here is the dilemma. They will not eat breakfast. They both say they are not hungry in the morning. When I suggest to them that they put a snack in their lunch to eat during break at school, they claim they don’t have time to eat it.
So, on school days they both don’t eat until noon. When I pick them up at 4 o’clock each day they are both crazy people. Seriously, they get in the car and act like savage beasts. Their blood sugar is so low that they are angry and exhausted. They remind me of feral, wild cats. Their fangs don’t go away until they eat something. It can make for an interesting car ride home, that’s for sure.
So, each day as I’m feeding them after school I’m thinking to myself, “Why am I doing this again?” They are 16 and 14 years old. They can be cooking their own food, heating up something in the microwave or throwing together some mac and cheese.
But here is the thing: they won’t. Unless I either make it, or yell at them to feed themselves, they forget or get sidetracked, or they are just plain lazy. Either one of them could be starving, but they forget to eat. It’s a mind boggling teenage phenomenon, one that isn’t just affecting my household.
My sister recently told me that she is feeding her two teenagers dinner at 5 o’clock. They too were coming home starving and gorging on food after school. By dinner at 7, they wouldn’t eat. So, she now serves them their main meal early at night and lets them eat again around 8 o’clock. She and her husband reheat the food she made, and eat at 7, like normal people.
The truth is, teenagers need between 2,500 to 3,000 calories a day, just like they need eight hours of sleep a night. They are in such a rapid growth pattern that their bodies need constant fuel and rest. It’s up to us parents to ensure that they get those two things and more.
Is it a little frustrating at times that they revert back to toddler like behavior? Yes it is, but with all phases, this too will end. As my husband and I remind ourselves each day, let’s make the most of it while they are still in the house. College will be here before we know it. They will be on their own, where they will have to take care of themselves.
So moving forward, I will restock the refrigerator, bake and freeze cookies for grab-and-go snacks and cross my fingers that the coming warmer months will entice them to eat more. I will nicely remind them to eat something every morning with a smile on my face. I’ll get them to eat somehow, even if I have to bribe them with a donut from time to time.w
Elizabeth Knobel lives in Windsor and is the mother of two teens who give her inspiration everyday. She can reached at [email protected].
