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Larkin

A confession. Want to know the one thing above all others that makes me feel like a failure with Larkin? It's her diet. What she eats – mostly, what she doesn't.

The frustration came to a head on Thanksgiving. Molly and I had 15 people here for a potluck extravaganza. The dining room table was loaded with dishes: ham, mashed potatoes, red cabbage, honeyed carrots, baked beans, broccoli casserole, salads, quiches, and on and on. And there stood Larkin, surveying this festive smorgasbord and whining, "I want Rice Kris-i-pies!"

Snap, crackle, pop: It's basically all she wants to eat, morning, noon and night. OK, well, there's yogurt too. And fruit. Pasta. Cheese – sometimes. Corn – sometimes. The occasional hot dog – if we slice the skin off of it.

It's funny, but depressing. You know you're in desperate culinary straits (not to mention nutritional) when getting a hot dog into your child is your great triumph. We worry about it. Has Larkin's growth stalled? It seems like she's weighed 31 pounds forever. Sometimes I think she always will. Hi, here's our 31-pound 10-year-old, isn't she a cute little kewpie doll?

In truth, what I do fear, looking down the road, isn't that she'll waste away, but that she'll be perpetually finicky. There are so many "separate eater" kids these days. We have a friend who comes for dinner, bringing her 11-year-old along — and, apologetically, a Tupperware container of wagon wheels, because "he's a little picky." Another friend's daughter always had "her own food" – noodles, crackers, cheese, the basic "white foods diet" — and now she's 17 and still doing it. Basically, she's a person who has never eaten.

Molly and I don't want that. Along with whining, an overindulged food pickiness was one of those childrearing lines in the sand for us. And yet, here we are. We've come to dread mealtime.

We've tried various strategies to stretch our daughter's food horizons, including sheer repetition, hoping that the seventh time we put a sweet potato in front of her would be different from the first six. We tried the Trojan Horse gimmick, sneaking one food inside another — and now we have a child who can extricate peas with the dexterity of a surgeon, and scent pureed carrot mixed into anything else like a drug-sniffing dog in an airport. Finally we gave up trying to get veggies into her. At least she's still eating fruit, we'd say.

In trying to deal with Larkin's stubborn, stunted palate, I find myself rocketing between extremes. "It's this or nothing tonight," I'll say sometimes, and let her go. But other nights I end up micromanaging. Offering dessert bribes. Cajoling. Threatening. Begging. Letting her eat in front of TV. I'll sit her on my lap in front of "Clifford the Big Red Dog" and feed her myself, bite by bite. And usually I'll succeed in getting dinner into her. But at what cost?

Nothing exposes your uncertainties and inconsistencies more clearly than struggling with your toddler over food. The problem is the lose-lose dilemma: either cave in, or let your child go hungry. You don't want to do either. So you end up doing a little of both, changing tacks on a day-to-day basis. One night I'm casual, the next I'm threatening all manner of dire consequences.

In my own childhood, "finishing your plate" was the rule, and I recall the dismal showdowns when I had to stay at the table long after everyone else had left, a chunk of fish congealing on my plate. Molly and I don't want to turn dinnertime into a battleground with Larkin. We just want her to eat. And really, is that asking too much? Oops. There comes that self-pity again.

What we do know is that the status quo is no go. So we've been preparing Larkin for a big break. In January she'll turn 3 — a big girl, we tell her, and a big girl eats grownup food at the grownups' table. Is she ready for that?

It won't be easy. I'm anticipating a veritable opera of "But I want goldfish!" To steel myself, I keep picturing a wraithlike 16-year-old huddled over her plate of macaroni, while the rest of us eat like princes. Maybe that will help keep me from caving in.

Meanwhile, does anyone out there have any brilliant, sly, paradigm-shifting suggestions for turning this famine into a feast?