Stacey Gross News Writer

Dinner at my house is basically an extended exercise in hostage negotiation.

My kids don’t like to eat what I make. Even if they like eating what I make. It’s a control thing. It’s become this weird haggling situation where if I put three broccoli florets on a plate, at least one of those kids is going to try and work me down to an expectation that they only eat two of them.

And no. It’s not because it’s broccoli. My kids order broccoli at restaurants even when they could order french fries. They’re awesome.

I’ve tried negative reinforcement (if you eat the broccoli I won’t make you eat the carrots).

I’ve tried positive reinforcement (if you eat the broccoli I’ll let you eat a brownie).

I’ve tried punishment (I’ll eat your brownie in front of you if you don’t eat the goldarn broccoli).

I’ve tried just crying alone in the corner of the kitchen while my cats eat my kids’ dinner off their plates and my kids watch YouTube videos about toys I will never be able to afford to buy them.

I don’t even know what Skinner would call that.

It doesn’t work. If you were wondering.

Shut up, you know you were wondering.

And before you even start with your critiques of the “clean plate club” method, save it. I’m not giving them more than they can eat. I’m giving them half of a child’s portion of everything, and I know they’re hungry because they’ve spent the entire evening leading up to dinner whining because I won’t give them a snack even though they are “literally starving to death.”

And my kids are not just persistent. They’re brave, too. Like, they’ll sit there and insist that they hate spaghetti even though they ate the living crap out of some spaghetti a week ago, and asked for seconds. But then, when I finally give up and let them leave the table, they’ll actually have the cajones to approach me ten minutes later and ask for a pack of captains wafers.

I know.

It’s bananas.

Which is another food they like but say they hate when it’s not what they “ordered.”

Because apparently they’ve picked up some wildly fallacious intel that I’m running some sort of a dang restaurant here.

But this is all just expository material to situate you in context for what I really want to tell you.

Dinner is a nightly family event at my house. The food is just a delivery system for family time. The television is switched off, no electronics are allowed near my table, and we play Pits and Peaks.

Pits and Peaks is the only good thing that a Kardashian will ever contribute to my life. So.

We love Pits and Peaks. We go around the table and tell each other the best and worst parts of our day. For a long time, it was just me calling on one of them when they raised their hands to answer the “what was your pit/peak” question. It didn’t generate a lot of original content in terms of conversational material. But it was our thing, and we did our thing religiously every night.

I’m not sure when it really officially started to happen, but since the girls have been in kindergarten I’ve started finding that Pits and Peaks can last us through an entire meal. What used to be a three minute game has become a thirty minute discourse.

Last night, I sort of came back online to realize that I’d checked out of what had already been a genuine ten minute conversation between my kids exclusively. I mean, there’s only so many times you can hear about the epic journey from the classroom to the cafeteria. I’m glad they tell me. I’m always happy to listen. I certainly want to encourage them to tell me about their day when a trip between classroom and cafeteria could result in opportunity for delinquency. But when they’re rehashing it to one another I don’t feel the need to attend all that closely. I’m pretty familiar with the major plot points of the tale.

What I realized, though, as I snapped out of my ten minutes of cognitive peace and quiet, is that they’d been rehashing it to themselves that whole time. Not only that, but it had all the elements of actual engaging conversation. Facial expressions matched reactions. Laughter in appropriate places.

There was eye contact, you guys.

Just let that wash over you for a minute.

I kept my mouth shut, because when you spend the majority of the day breaking up bare-knuckle boxing matches over infractions like one kid trespassing too far over the imaginary boundary between her own and her sister’s side of the middle sofa cushion, you learn quickly not to draw unnecessary attention to yourself.

Kids are like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. If you stay really still and don’t make any noise they can’t even see you.

Right hand to God, you guys.

Best. Parenting. Advice. Ever.

Eventually, the conversation sputtered and died, and attention was again focused on exactly how many bites of the delightful chicken and biscuits – which they loved last week but which, apparently, makes them gag violently now – would buy them liberation from the table.

Whatever.

But that ten minute self-sustaining conversation they had? Pretty sure it might have been the first one I’ve witnessed them develop and maintain all on their own.

It was a tiny, magnificent moment.

It was as magnificent a tiny moment as the one in which they learned to hold their own bottles. I still have the text blast I sent out to everyone I knew that day.

That day changed my life.

This one did too, a little bit.