p.s. A ray of hope

As a p.s. for my last post in the end I managed to get us downstairs and outside. Giulio got his tricycle and Livia went in her stroller and we walked over to the park. There we ran into a little boy who goes to school with Giulio, named Carlo, and his mother Lorena. Lorena and I started talking, comparing notes as it were on our two boys.
"Carlo won't eat," she told me as we watched our kids playing in the gravel underneath the big kid climber.
"Oh," I said with a laugh, "Giulio won't eat either, there are days I think he gets by on air."
"Carlo won't eat anything," she said. "Only roasted potatoes, a little fruit, and milk. Only the milk he won't drink from a cup, so I have to feed it to him with a spoon."
"Really? A spoon, huh? And at school?"
"Nothing," she said with a sigh. "He won't eat anything. I have to come get him at 1 o'clock and take him home and try and feed him there. Now we are trying twice a week to leave him until four to see if he will eat there, but so far nothing."
"Not even pasta?" Pasta was such a staple of the Italian diet, it could be prepared in so many different ways and rarely contained anything a small child would refuse.
"Not even pasta. He was sick once after eating a plate of pasta and now he won't eat it." I didn't bother asking what kind of pasta he had refused, if it was with tomato sauce or ragu', or if it was pasta done in a white sauce, or pasta with beans or some kind of vegetable or shrimp, or spaghettia carbonara. The list was endless, and did she really mean to say that he wouldn't eat any of it?
Carlo was impressive. While it was normal for Giulio to refuse to eat anything resembling a meal when at home with me, he once went a whole week where he only ate cheese and cookies, he always ate at school, frequently having seconds on the pasta. At school there is a chart with each child's name on it and a box for pasta, for meat, and for fruit. These boxes are checked off by the teacher during lunch time, and if a child has seconds the words "bis" are written in the box. This list is carefully checked by each parent at the end of each day.
Eating is such an important part of Italian life that any kid who really wants to drive his mother around the bend knows that all he has to do is refuse to eat dinner and suddenly he is surrounded by parents imploring, begging him or her to eat. Giulio once spent four days in the hospital due to an allergic reaction from medication. He shared the room with another little boy named Marco and every meal time was the same:
"Come on, honey, you've got to eat. Please, Marco, just a little. Come on Marco, you see how well that other little boy is eating? You need to eat or you won't get better and then we won't be able to leave the hospital. Please Marco! Just today that doctor told me that if you don't eat you can't go home. You want to go home, don't you? Please Marco, please eat, just try the pasta...no? The meat, you like meat...no, well, have some fruit, ok, well, some bread. Please Marco!" And so on. At every meal. After four days of this it took all my effort not yell, "If he didn't have you begging him all the time to eat, he might actually go ahead and do it!" Apparently Marco's mother didn't know the aforementioned law of children, the more you want them to do something the less likely they are to do it.
I for the most part try and stay away from this game, and try also to keep my husband's concern about Giulio and eating to a minimum. Mostly I leave it to his caregivers to provide him with one carefully made 3 course meal. Giuio learned at daycare before he could walk that all meals consist of a first course of pasta or rice, a second course of meat and vegetables, and a third course of fruit. The food is always very tasty, though sometimes the mothers complain about the quality. I had a friend send her child to a different school because she wasn't pleased with the quality of the pesto sauce they used. No such problems for Giulio. He eats everything at school, and then comes home and refuses to eat much of anything from me, though I can usually get him to eat pasta at lunchtime on Saturdays.
I refused and still refuse to make a big deal out of eating, cause what am I going to do, you can't make a child chew and swallow against his will, though I tend to go back and forth on my thinking as far as cooking for him. Sometimes I think, well, he won't eat much, so I won't make much of an effort, and offer things like grilled cheese, eggs, french toast, and turkey dogs for dinner. Then other times, usually after spending time with some Italian female friend and seeing what culinary masterpieces she makes for her children, I feel guilty about Giulio and his turkey dogs so I go to the butcher's and ask for extra tender steak for a small child. And the butcher knows exactly what I am talking about and gives me the most tender cut he has because mothers all the time are asking him for steak for a small child. Or I make pasta with homemade broth, or rack my brains thinking of something nutricious yet healthy to feed him for dinner. But after a few times of watching Giulio take one bite of the 8 euro steak carefully procured just for him and having him announce, "Mommy don't like this. Gulio non vuole." (translation Giulio he doesn't want this) I give up and go back to making grilled cheese for dinner. And comfort myself thinking, well, I know he is getting enough to eat at school. And I'm an American. We don't go in for three course meals at preschool.