If this is a winnable battle, it’s one we are going to put our energy in to. I consider being an adventurous eater to be a gift.
The answer really is serve them raw with dip, as a before dinner snack. If it’s got dip and she gets to do it herself, she’ll eat it!
Then you don’t have to worry about what she leaves on her plate at dinner. No battles!
(Seriously though, check out the amount of fat and salt that are in chicken nuggets. It’s a lot for an adult!)
You can sneak a lot of veggies into spaghetti sauce. You can sneak some veggies into cheese sauce. Just saying.
Be careful, though. We had a kid who thought he didn’t like fish sticks but he DID like chicken nuggets. So we led him to believe a certain brand of fish sticks were, in fact, chicken sticks. And he ate them and liked them. So we finally fessed up, and after that he regarded everything we fed him–everything!–with great suspicion. Until he was…15 or so and started eating everything in the house no matter what it was. Except fish sticks.
I don’t disagree- but picky at 17 months doesn’t necessarily turn into picky at 5 or 10. If she eats the vegetables off your plate but not her own, then leave them on your plate. Maybe try broccoli with a cheese sauce since she likes mac and cheese. Or try cooking them differently ( to this day my mother swears I don’t like vegetables. No, I don’t like the way she serves vegetables).
Why is it that your daughter knows this new food on her plate is a vegetable? I know that sounds like a stupid question, but she’s seventeen months old. At that age, you can tell them that any breaded fried food is a chicken nugget if it’s approximately the right size and shape. They can’t really look at something new and think “that’s a fruit and that’s meat and that’s the dreaded vegetable”. My guess is that you are letting her know that you want her to eat her vegetables - and that may have a lot to do with it. She’s right around the age where her favorite word is going to be “No”. It will probably get better by the time she’s 2 and a half or three as long as you keep offering new foods.
I don’t think its a winnable battle especially not with a toddler. It might be with a five year old. Don’t make it into a battle, for down that path lives a life of power plays around food.
My kids have been pretty good veggie eaters, but my daughter abhors anything more than slightly spicy - and always has. There are plenty of foods she will eat, and its her palate, not mine. When we go out for Indian, its Chicken Briyana, mild. Thai its satay. On the other hand, she eats sushi, escargot, eggplant - she’s game to TRY anything, except spicy - and betraying her by not warning her doesn’t win us points (and strangely, she hates sour cream).
The advice my pediatrician gave me…you decide what to put in front of them, they decide whether to eat it and how much, they won’t starve.
Its a gift she may give herself, you can encourage her, but as a parent, there are so many gifts we’d love to give our children, but you just can’t. You can’t gift them musical ability, or a love of geeky movies, or being an adventurous eater. You can simply gift them the opportunity.
But that’s how you win, right there. That’s all you really need to do, ultimately.
I should say… the “battle” is not with your kid, but against the commercial and cultural forces that work against Real Food. But if everything you put in front of your kid is real food… you (and she) win. The kid won’t like all of it, to be sure, but that doesn’t matter.
My kid loved watching YouTube clips. I sat him on my lap, behind the pc screen, cozily watching the screen together. Then I would feed him small spoons of the veggies he minded the least. In this way, he ate quite large quantities of peas or spinach or canned corn and didn’t even know it, distracted by the clips.
It strikes me that there’s a difference between the spoon-feeding stage (when you kinda need them to accept the mouthfuls and get it done), and everything after.
I don’t see withholding dessert as " You must eat this disgusting thing to earn a reward of that yummy thing". I see it as an extension of “You can’t ask for more food until you’ve eaten the food you already have”.
Take sausages, for example. There’s usually two left over after I dish up. Whoever would like one can have one, but they can’t expect to get an extra sausage before they’ve finished what is already on their plate.
In exactly the same way, they can’t have ice cream while their plate is half full of uneaten food. It’s not a reward system, it’s about not encouraging waste.
I feel your pain. I had all kinds of great ideas on what a great mom I’d be by keeping it healthy. I didn’t consider the other adults who look after my son when I’m not there.
My mom introduce him to Pepsi which he immediately became addicted to. His other grandmother is a picky eater herself and so is his Dad, so his tastes quickly turned to soft drinks, chicken tenders, fries, hamburgers. Sigh!
Not to mention I have an issue with the preschools that consistently throw parties for Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, plus the birthday kids bring in cupcakes or cookies to share with the class. It’s a losing battle.
But I haven’t given up. I don’t want to scar him, but I do prod my son (who’s now almost 5) to at least try one bite of broccoli or whatever which he will. He may not take a second bite, but at least he’s not gagging and willing to try new things most of the time.
We talk about how candy will make your muscles not so strong if you eat too much. If he does eat some sliced apples or something healthy I say, “Wow! You just got a little taller because you ate that fruit. Look how tall and strong you are!”
Once, I showed him a picture of three adult men. One is an actor who is only 4 feet 4 inches tall due to a childhood illness. I know this is terrible, but I told my son, the smaller adult was little because his mom and dad allowed him to only eat candy his whole life and he never grew as tall as his friends. My sons eyes widened and I could see in his face his mind was really thinking this over. “Uh oh, better not eat so much candy or I won’t grow tall.”
We went sledding and he was able to drag the sled up the hill by himself and I told him the green beans and strawberries helped him to get strong enough.
Yes, I’m brainwashing him a little. He know’s what I mean by healthy food. He’ll ask for a piece of candy and I’ll say no. He will try to negotiate with me by offering to eat some fruit, can he have some candy after?
When he was younger he used to gag and carry on when I’d get him to take a taste of something. But now, he’s realizing that some of it is actually quite good. I still have a ways to go and as he gets older I hope his tasters will adjust, but as long as he’s at least trying a bite full here and there right now, it’s okay.
It’s unbelievable to me how much I’ve had to fight with his grandma’s and Dad and other caregiver’s about laying off the crappy food. Yes, I know it’s Grandma’s job to spoil, but I wasn’t happy with her sneaking him soft drinks when he’s just two years old.
It’s an ongoing job, making sure his diet is fairly reasonable and sometimes I fail. Not enough fiber and he gets constipated or not getting properly hydrated. It’s so easy for a kid to fall into eating bad since fast food and candy are so accessible and it’s difficult when I feel like I’m the only one trying to keep him openminded about new and “good for you” foods.
Your daughter is still so young. Try bits of carrot or other veggies in with homemade soups. Fruit smoothies or slices. As she gets older you can help her to understand good eating.
I think some of it is about getting to know your individual kid, too. Probably by 2 and a half, I could tell when she wasn’t eating dinner because she genuinely wasn’t hungry, and in those cases, I don’t push it at all. At that age, with growth spurts and down times between growth spurts, the amount they are hungry for can vary wildly. And I think “not eating when you’re not hungry” is a great life habit. That’s also the scenario when I’ll give her something to eat later if she asks for it – I’m not cooking a whole new meal, but something like yogurt or peanut butter on crackers or a bowl of cereal. But generally not a dessert item.
However, I could also tell when she was not eating at a meal because she was distracted, usually because something was happening after that she wanted to hurry up and get to – like grandma is coming over, or we were going to watch a Disney film later. Then I will use dessert as a way of focusing in on the plan “hey, we’re going to eat our chicken and broccoli, and then after dinner we’ll have some cookies while we watch Little Mermaid.” I’m lucky that my daughter isn’t a big bargainer, that’s usually enough to get the meal back on track.
Of course, they always pull new ones on you. Just the other day (my daughter just turned four), she started with this dramatic “I’m not eating this, this is YUCKY” which is really not something we say in our house so I was like WTF? And she kept up with it … and then I realized it was something she saw on a kids show. She wanted me to do my “lines,” I guess, cajoling her into eating the food, which I did, and then she did a lot of dramatic sighs before exclaiming “oh, this is delicious after all!” (which is how the plot of the ended). Great audition, kid. Don’t make it a habit.
Goodness. They’re complicated little critters, aren’t they? And sometimes I also wonder if my daughter would know to say that food is “gross” if she hadn’t seen some kid on PBS say it in a well-meaning but moronic “lesson” show.
Anyway: my daughter will pretty much live off of vegetables on the days that we (1) buy a new vegetable together, (2) cut up a bunch of raw vegetables together, or (3) I present an attractive tray of cut-up raw vegetables. I tell myself that those days make up for the days when she lives on bread and milk.
I second establishing the “try one bite rule”. You grow out of a taste / texture that is plain nasty and get to where it’s tolerable or possibly even great. Jelly fish and yak butter tea were two things that I found disgusting at first and eventually came to love (of course those aren’t veggies).
The elder Dr Sears (as opposed to the son aka nutbag vac on your own schedule nudge nudge wink wink don’t vaccinate* Dr Sears) gave one piece of advice that resonated with me “shoot for a balanced week.” In other words, Kiddo doesn’t have to have veggies every meal as long as it balances out in the long run.
New Zealand clinical psychologist Nigel Latta says in Politically Incorrect Parenting: Before Your Kids Drive You Crazy, Read This! that you should expect 20 yucks for every yum when presenting new food items. IIRC this is backed by research. It indicates simply presenting the food on the plate without comment up to 20 times will often result in the child’s natural curiosity winning out.
It’s a fine, funny parenting book into the bargain.
See, in theory I agree with you, and I do the same thing when it comes to second helpings: no, you can’t have another sausage till you’ve eaten that one. But when it comes to different foods (eat that one before you can have this one) I’m not convinced that’s what gets across to the kids.
With my older kid, I also do the thing of explaining what different foods do. Milk and yoghurt and cheese help your bones to grow, chicken and beef help you be strong, vegetables help your stomach to work properly and help you not to get sick, sweet stuff is basically only for fun so a little bit is nice but too much makes you weak. She likes that a lot. (That’s not a lot of help to even sven now, but it might be useful in a couple of years…)
OK, hold on a minute. Exactly what is the problem here? It sounds like, from the last quote, that the core issue, the one that you’re “going to put [your] energy in to,” is that you really want your daughter to grow up an adventurous eater. Is that it? Because, if so, she’ll already “happily eat tidbits… of pretty exotic stuff” off your plate. So there’s no problem, right?
Or is the problem (suggested by your thread title) that she won’t eat peas and carrots? Which is maybe a problem, yes, but you already know this is a power-struggle issue. How much energy are you really interested in investing in forcing your daughter to eat vegetables just for the sake of eating vegetables, minus the adventurous-eater-training thing? What exactly is the long-term goal here?
In any case, the underlying issue, it seems to me, is that toddlers want choices. They want to start controlling their world any way they can. Choosing to say “no” is one way of controlling their world, as is sneaking tidbits off mom’s plate. Try building on the latter idea - there are plenty of good suggestions already in this thread on allowing your daughter to “sneak” food. You could also involve her in the cooking process, “letting” her have tastes of ingredients as you prepare food (with no pressure to actually do so). My daughter loved watching a dish being prepared, and would happily sample pretty much anything that went into the food, up to and including some pretty pungent sauces.
Interesting to see this thread on the same page as the “does Tough Love work?” thread:
If the teenager/young adult in the Tough Love situation is dealing with addiction, it takes on a whole 'nother level of consideration. But both, ultimately, deal with the parent-kid power dynamic.
And, ultimately, both deal with the parents mindset about themselves. How can you be a loving parent AND a leading parent at the same time?
This really sucks. Your are teaching your son that tall = good and short = bad. You are also teaching him that the a person’s physical appearance is totally THEIR responsibility, and if they fall short of some ideal it is because they were morally weak.
So if he sees a person with cystic fibrosis or multiple sclerosis or even someone like my son, who is quite short because that’s the hand that his genes dealt him, your son is going to think that these people were bad candy eaters who didn’t listen to their parents.
Sorry, but I think that is crap parenting.
Missed the edit window - apologies. I think the statement above is crap posting. I should have made my point without being so blunt and inflammatory. I don’t take back my meaning - I still think it is awful to set your child up to believe that tall people are morally superior to short people - but I do take back the way I said it.