I just want to live to see him eat salad. Is that asking so much?
December 19, 2006Just about one year ago, I wrote about Henry’s maddeningly limited food preferences. Henry was a strict adherent to the all-dairy, all-white-with-a-little-light-yellow-in-it diet, claiming that it “tasted good” and also “I’m not trying anything else ever nyah nyah nyah.” Any attempts to introduce new foods were met with shrieks of protest. It was a fun time.
Since that post, Scott and I have employed different strategies to get him to eat new foods. We created an enormous New Food Chart, with shiny gold stickers for each food and the promise of a new toy when 10 stickers were achieved. On the recommendation of some expert or other, we tried making the tasting of new foods his “job,” with no rewards given except the satisfaction of a job well done. We tried reverse psychology (“don’t you dare eat that broccoli stalk. I mean it.”). We tried explaining the food pyramid and what foods would make him big and strong like a Rescue Hero. We tried begging.
Guess what worked?
Nothing. Nothing worked. In fact, I do believe we made it worse. Congratulations, feckless parents!
In this entire year, Henry has pretty much stuck to his original diet. He added two new foods to his repertoire: baked beans and grilled cheese. The latter makes it much easier to go out to eat. The former means at least he’s getting some fiber, albeit with more sugar than I like to think about. True, these foods would not have entered his repertoire without our cajoling, but looking back, I think we won a couple of battles but in doing so lost the damn war.
Here’s what we accomplished: Henry now knows how deeply we care about what he eats. He knows it’s pretty much the one thing we can’t make him do. And most of all, he knows that he’s got us. He now delights in telling me all about what he’s not going to eat. He tried tomato sauce and loved it, but now, he says, he’s never going to eat it again. Same thing for peanut butter. And carrots. And pierogi. And about 36 other items.
(Parents of younger children, take note: do not give your child even the merest hint that you give a flying fig about what they eat. Don’t even look at their plate. Serve them whatever you made (or ordered) (or microwaved) and consider your job done. Because I am telling you, once your kid senses that they have the upper hand, you’re done. Heed my words! Heeeed! )
So now that every one of our tactics has backfired, I have officially given up. I have ripped up the food chart. I am done begging and punishing and even suggesting. I told him that what he eats is entirely up to him, but that I would no longer make him a different dinner from ours.
We’ve been doing this for about a month, and it’s made absolutely not one smidgen of difference in his diet. I more or less wimp out every night and make some kind of a pasta with dinner—the difference being that it’s part of everyone’s dinner and not just his special foodstuff—so he eats that. So in other words he’s not eating differently, but I am, and sweet Moses I’m sick of macaroni and cheese. (At some point I will gather up the courage to make a dinner that doesn’t include one of his greatest hits, and deal with his keen disappointment at the absence of beige foods laid out before him. I’m sure he’ll go without dinner that night, but at the very least he has to learn that it’s not the end of the world. Right? Someone’s anecdote of their kid who never ate anything and now eats snails cooked in tripe would be appreciated just about now.)
The only thing left for me to do is just be okay with what he eats or doesn’t eat. I am trying, lord how I’m trying, to think positively. What he likes, he really, really likes. And that’s good. He could eat 56 containers of yogurt a day. He derives more satisfaction from blueberries than I previously believed possible. He gets positively dewy-eyed over the thought of pasta mixed with ricotta cheese. If I keep pushing, I’m going to dampen his enthusiasm for what little he does eat, and pretty soon he will eat nothing but sand. Just to spite me. Kids are nuts, did I mention?
So these days when he refuses any and all foods I do my best to laugh gaily, tra la, as if he just told me he’s not going to do my taxes. And I say, “Someday you’ll eat that,” and he agrees. “Someday,” he says, watching me for signs of discomfort, “but not now. And not soon.”
Reader Comments (105)
There are very few things children actually have control over and when they find one of those rareties, especially one that really, really bothers their parents, they - I can't help myself - milk it for all it is worth.
You already know the right thing to do. Cook what you want, offer it to him, allow him to go hungry.
For what it is worth, I've always felt that the fear of our babies starving is among the most hard-wired of all maternal instincts. It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, but it really doesn't help you walk away from a food fight with a four year old.
What would they eat if they lived in a culture that did not have pizza, chicken nuggets or macaroni & cheese? They would find some other foods to latch on to, wouldn't they?
I thought of this after the grandparents expressed their amazement for umpteenth time that our daughter eats more than the menu of three items listed above (she is the only grandchild to do so.)
Kids will eat (or at least learn to deal with) what is served to them. Especially if there are no other alternatives available, no matter what.
Otherwise, I want to know how those kids in outer Mongolia are surviving without chicken nuggets.
One chaperone came to me one day and pulled me aside to tell me her darling son would NOT be eating the vegetable soup, cornbread, ham, apples or cider. He "only eats chicken nuggets or pizza, but that's ok, because I brought some to microwave back at the lodge for him." I smiled and explained that 1. we didn't have a microwave and 2. during the program, we did not allow outside food unless it was medically necessary (doctor's note required).
She had a fit, exclaiming that she'd once tried to wean him off of pizza and chicken nuggets, but that he "had not eaten a BITE for over a week." Umm...hate to tell you, lady, but your big, strong, healthy fourth-grader was getting nutrition from SOMEWHERE!
By the end of the day, Mr. Picky had polished off two big mugs full of veggie soup (very proud he was of it, too, as he'd helped make it), several slices of ham, and a big chunk of cornbread (with the butter he'd helped churn).
Sure, not every picky kid was this sort of success story...but everyone always found SOMETHING he or she would eat. And breakfast the next morning was always a big spread of pancakes, breakfast meats, oatmeal, granola, various fruits, toast, etc.
He won't starve. And you're a great parent.
I don't quite know how it happened, but now, in college (I think starting about mid high-school) I am the least picky person I know. I will eat anything. So I'll put in my vote with everyone else here and say not to worry about it. He'll be fine. He does say he likes other foods, so there's nothing wrong with him mechanically (as it were), and sooner or later he'll realize that there are cooler things to be in control of than his eating.
Imagine my shock one day when we all go out to eat sometime when he's in his mid-20s, and not only does he get a salad but ordered sweet tea. I was speechless for several minutes before asking, "Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?"
The other thing that has been really helpful is having made friends with a family that (has kids that like all sorts of food, and most importantly,) has serious standards about table manners. The parents are totally on board with the "no whining" and "no poisoning the atmosphere" rules and it made a huge difference, particularly when my oldest was 4,5 and 6. There is strength in numbers, and it helped when my kids weren't the only ones having to follow the rules, and it helped when I wasn't the only parent holding the fort. I tell the kids to make a meal of what's there, not to ruin others' enjoyment of the meal and be social. And we alway have one thing that they'll eat plus bread or rice.
The other thing that has helped is NPR. My 11 year old son identifies himself as a nerd, and having listened to The Splendid Table with Lynne Rosetto Casper in the car, he has come to think of adventurousness with food as being educated and sophisticated. And he doesn't want to be the opposite of that! So it has improved over time, even if he's not going to eat pizza anytime soon. (I know! A kid who doesn't eat pizza or Oreos.)
I found that, as the kids got older (now 7 and 11) I was less worried about starvation or nutrition, and more worried about the social aspects of eating. The only drawback I have found is that when this works and they try new foods and like them, the foods are invariably expensive and delicious. Exactly the food I want to eat, but in smaller portions than a ravenous pre-teen.
Anyhow, we were worried about how much he did or rather didn't eat; begged, bargained and bellowed, and the exact same thing happened - our son gained complete control.
So we stopped (visibly) caring so much. Less bargaining, less discussion and encouragement. More of saying simply "I'd like you to try it" and leaving it there. It was hard, but it made meals more pleasant, if not more successful from an eating point of view.
Pleased to report that he even eats pizza now (finally, at age 15). Our younger son, aged 6, is given far fewer choices.
I've heard that a child must try a new food 100 times before it is familiar and thus acceptable to them. My theory: after a sufficiently high volume of pasta meals, he will -want- to try something new.
Hang in there!
My mother tells my aunt was a notoriously picky eater, who came into frequent conflict with her father (who had spent his childhood starving, and was apoplectic at good food getting thrown away). His dictum "No one has yet starved to death next to food" was reinforced by making his child eat by serving her the meal she didn't want to touch until she ate it. I think my aunt went something like four days of eating nothing before she finally caved in and declared that beans were indeed delicious.
My aunt in turn spawned two picky eaters although she did her best to not to push them to eat, much as my cousin drove her to despair. Indeed he was a skinny boy who was prone to illness and who genuinely hated all food except for spinach and soup-with-noodles.
I think sibling-competitiveness pushed him to try to obtain some food for himself (because otherwise I was happy to devour everything in sight), but mostly he went on and on and on being skinny and picky. The first time he said he was hungry, he was 12 years old. Everyone fell about in stunnedness and in wonderment and made him repeat it again such was our amazement. And then... he just started eating and it took off from there from whence he joined the ranks of the ferociously devoursome and now my aunt mostly argues with him to eat less.
I think as long as a child is not actually failing to thrive, you need to just need to play it cool as you're doing...
Good luck.
But seriously, you're on the right track by ignoring his food quirks. He'll branch out eventually, and he won't starve. Promise.
Tripe is white. some Mac&cheese is white, cauliflower, rice, potatoes, pork, chicken, apples, pears, grapes....sounds ok to me.
That's what happened with Maddie. We started out making a seperate meal for her. Then we started just incorporating something she'd eat with our regular meal (like pasta or applesauce or yogurt).
Then, when we were ready to deal with the whining, about a year later, we stopped serving anything but our dinner.
Then, we added the 'you have to have one bite if you want dessert'. (I know some people think that's bad 'bribery' but we worded it as 'If you want a treat food, you have to fill your body with energy food first.')
And over time her repetoire has expanded, it still sucks but she's a lot like her Picky Pants Father so it's not surprising.
She ate turkey meatloaf and mashed potatoes last night. If you'd told me she'd be eating that 4 years ago? I would have laughed in your face.
You'll go at your own pace with your own tolerance for the whining. But you're on the right track with the 'I don't care' thing. Logan and I had to practice not getting irritated with her for a few years really. Now we're just matter of fact about it.
We didn't get mad, just said, 'You're ruining our meal with the whining and crying. Please go to your room until you're ready to enjoy our dinner with us."
She left 3-4 times and now never does.
Me? I'd rather not be a dinner Nazi but instead encourage my kids to make good choices and blend veggies into their fruit smoothies when they're not looking. ;)
I just served one thing every night (among many for the rest of us) that I knew the Picky One (whichever one that happened to be that year) would eat, and decided not to worry about it. They did always have to have a miniscule taste of something new, but I even gave up on that one when it caused dramatic gagging and food falling off the tongue onto the floor.
They say, "Pick your battles," and whoever this amorphous "they" is, they're right. Save it for something *really* important down the line. And don't hesitate to use this information against him later, like when he brings his first girlfriend home! You deserve at least that.