This Saturday was my 11-year-old son's last meet for the season. He swam in the Columbia Neighborhood Swim League's All-City Swim Meet on Saturday afternoon at the Phelps Luck Pool.

Feeding my kids at swim meets has been a challenge all summer long. There's a reasonably wide and cheap selection of reasonably priced food and drink--that's never the problem.

The problem is that my younger kids both have food issues.

The boy has pronounced milk and wheat sensitivities. The girl is a resistant eater, and there are just seven or eight dishes she will eat.

As many as 8 percent of all kids nationwide have food sensitivities, which range from sensitivities to wheat to severe allergies to peanuts. Among children with asthma (like my middle child), that figure is substantially higher, as high as 80 percent.

Food sensitivities are also common ailments for people on the autistic spectrum. Autistic spectrum disorders are as common on both sides of our family as blue eyes. Considering the range of issues they could be dealing with, I feel pretty lucky.

Ironically, the child most people peg as "spectrum-y," my oldest son, is a prodigious and democratic eater. He even loves green vegetables. Go figure.

Nothing my daughter eats is likely to make her ill. The challenge with my daughter is getting her to ingest anything resembling a balanced diet.

For years I felt like a terrible mother, spoiling my daughter by indulging her picky palate. It was only after she threw up when I browbeat her into taking just three bites of something she didn't like that I knew we had a problem.

I was relieved to hear our pediatrician say that the psychological damage we would inflict by forcing her to eat was worse than any nutritional damage she'd suffer from finicky eating. Fortunately, she really likes the fiber supplements and vitamins that look and taste like gummi bears.

My son's issue is that a lot of his favorite foods are off limits. I really admire his discipline in avoiding foods that he knows are bad for him, but there isn't always an ingredient list on hand.

Extreme gastrointestinal suffering and skin rashes ensue.

Last summer he had weeks of stomach cramps that culminated in an ER visit and emergency CT scan. These were followed by several visits to the pediatric gastroenterologist at Children's Hospital and a colonoscopy.

We never got a formal diagnosis. But his health dramatically improved when we took milk and milk products out of his diet. It was part of the process of elimination that the ER doctor suggested we try while waiting to see the gastroenterologist for the first time.

We hit on eliminating wheat from his diet when I read about my daughter's food issues and stumbled over information about wheat sensitivities. My cousin, the boy's godfather, has Celiac disease, which involves wheat and gluten allergies.

One of the many advantages of having my mother-in-law live with us is that she feeds us at home. This means my husband and I are spared the nightly dilemma that so many Salary Parents face of figuring out what's for dinner or what the kids will eat for lunch.

During the school year, the oldest and youngest kids eat school lunch. Mercifully, the girl likes school pizza, at least for now. That doesn't work for our middle child, so he takes his lunch.

When we're out and about, I know it helps if I pack their food or buy it in advance. My son will be happy with grilled chicken patties from any fast food restaurant or rice cakes and deli meat, while my daughter will eat Cheetos, pretzels, and some varieties of fast food mac-and-cheese or chicken nuggets.

We have a hard time pulling off family dinners, and I regret that. My kids' table manners are definitely the worse for the lack of consistent oversight. When I confess that we rarely eat together, people look at me like they're trying to decide whether to call the authorities.

At the same time, I feel like there are some advantages to the way we eat. The kids aren't under pressure to eat when they aren't hungry. Food and the dinner table are not battlegrounds in our house.

Speaking of food, I need to go buy something for my daughter to take to day camp this week. She thinks she may be able to expand her zone of comfort to include a particular kind of Lunchable.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.