Mom on the Run: Hungry teenage son never gets enough food

I'm watching my son eat. I'm already finished—I ate two slices of my spinach and feta pizza, and that was enough. My husband is still eating too, but my son is the fascinating one: he's hunched over his plate, scooping food into his mouth as if he hasn't eaten in a month. And I guess he feels that way: it's been, oh, three hours since his last meal.

The three of us are at Grill Kabob & Pizza, one of my son's favorite restaurants. He'd come here every day if he could, and always order the same meal: grilled chicken kabob, no chickpeas, extra rice, and tandoori bread. Generally, he inhales it in mere minutes; today is no exception.

"What, Mom, are you done already?" My son has actually looked up from his plate, taken a break from shoveling saffron rice onto his fork, and realized that my plate is empty. "Yeah," I tell him. "I know it was only two slices, but they filled me up."

"Hmph." His tone is one of disgust. "I could have eaten that whole thing, easy," he says, nodding towards my pizza. "Well, there's a lot of cheese on there," I explain. "And I wasn't all that hungry."

"You don't have to justify yourself to him," my husband says to me. "He eats constantly. Nobody should even try to keep up with him."

"That's because I'm always hungry!" My son has carefully organized the food on his plate. He's got all the chicken in the upper-left hand corner, the stack of rejected cucumber slices (heaven forbid he eat cucumber!) half on, half off his plate on the lower edge, and most of the plate covered with a mound of rice. We come here so often that the owner knows my son and gives him extra food, and though he's been eating steadily, there's still a mound of rice and several chunks of chicken still to go.

And truly, my 14-year-old son is constantly hungry. He's always got his head in the fridge or the pantry, finishes up whatever pasta or potatoes we have for dinner, and can eat a full meal even after just finishing one. Whenever we go out, he eats his whole meal … and then half of mine.

"If that's not going to be enough for you, you can have some of my pizza," I tell him, and nod at the pan to my right. "I was figuring I'd have it for lunch tomorrow, but if you're still hungry ..."

"Eww, no way," my son sniffs, wrinkling his nose at the thought. Well, of course. If he won't eat cucumber, no way is he going to eat spinach. Besides, really, he does have a big meal there, especially for barely 11:30 a.m. And he's filling in any gaps with the triangles of fresh tandoori bread, shoving them, folded but whole, into his mouth.

"Dang," he murmurs, as he picks up his empty Lipton iced tea bottle and looks at it forlornly. He gazes at his plate, still with a heap of rice and a chunk of chicken. I pull out my wallet, fish out a bill. "Here, go get yourself a second one," I tell him. No wonder my cash disappears these days—I'm always trying to fill up my son. He eats at home, of course, huge well-rounded meals, but he requires another feeding about every two hours, it seems, and with all these back-to-school errands ...

He comes back with his new iced tea, twists off the lid, and chugs half of it down in one long gulp. He wipes the back of his hand with his mouth, and bends back down towards his plate.

"Are you going to get enough?" his father asks sarcastically. "Never," our ravenous growing boy replies, shoving grains of rice onto his fork. "But it'll get me home." My husband looks at me, eyebrows raised, and we shake our heads.

Lianne Wilkens lives with her family in Manassas. She can be reached at lian , or follow her on Twitter @MessengerMOTR.