I don’t know that I have any advice, but I do know that my aunt and uncle have been dealing with my young cousin, who has been the pickiest eater I’ve ever heard of.
It started when she was about 2 years old (she’s 11 or 12 now I believe). This child will eat:
Noodles (plain or with butter)
White bread/pizza crust with nothing on it
Strawberries
Chocolate milk
That’s it. Since she was 2 years old. My aunt and uncle have tried everything they could think of. They did the “offer food and wait for the kid to get hungry” thing. She didn’t eat for four days. She takes a multivitamin and has had normal growth patterns. When she goes to friends’ houses, their families know what she will/won’t eat, so it’s not a parental power struggle per se, since she won’t eat anything different outside of home. They are hoping she outgrows it at some point, because she’s going to need more than what she’ll eat now when she goes through puberty.
I don’t see them very often, but when I do I have a hard time with the whole situation. But this is the most stubborn kid, and my aunt and uncle have given up trying to feed her anything else.
Sorry to ask what might be kind of a morbid question, but I’m genuinely curious: Is the “picky eater” phenomenon a luxury of the affluent West? I find it difficult to imagine a mother struggling with poverty in a poor nation accepting a refusal by her hungry child to eat whatever cheap bread or charity gruel she is able to get her hands on for her family.
I like Cranky’s suggestion of having the child help with the food preparation. I wish my mom would have done that with me. I was called a picky eater when I was little, and though it was true to some extent, I think a lot of it had to do with the difference in preferences between my mom and myself.
She likes rare meats, so that’s the way she prepared them. I discovered when I was older, I don’t dislike steak, if it’s well done. Same thing with chicken and pork chops. I like a large variety of vegetables, but would only eat corn when I was younger. Turns out, I can’t stand cooked vegetables, but love most of them raw. I like baked potatoes, but still not with sour cream and chives on them. I thought pepper was “hot” and she used a lot of spices in her cooking. Had she allowed me some input in the preparation, I think both of us would have been a lot happier. Doesn’t sound like it’s necessarily the problem in the OP, but it’s an alternative to “they’ll eat it when they get hungry enough.”
My parents were of the ‘If you don’t like it, don’t eat it, but at least have a taste’ school, which seemed to have worked. I survived childhood and now eat quite well.
I think, in my case, ‘pickiness’ was the name given to the divergence between my tastes and my parents. They still have trouble cooking for me as an adult (because I generally don’t like the ‘three-little-piles’ style that their cooking takes) and call me ‘picky’ to this day, but the fact is that I just enjoy very different foods then they do - and now they turn up their noses at things that I eat ! Who’s picky now ?!
I don’t know if it would have helped for me to cook with them, though. How was I to know that a nice plate of Ethiopian food, or okra, or shrimp tempura, would strike my fancy more than meatloaf?
My mom fought with me for years to eat peas. Then she realized that I would scarf spinach, green beans, okra, asparagus and brussel sprouts and it became less of an issue. My brother ate at least a can full of peas at each meal, so they weren’t going to waste.
The only time she made us a new dinner was when neither my brother or I liked the tuna noodle casserole (the kind with potato chips on top). We tried it, though. I think we had hamburger helper or something quick.
The ‘no food’ thing works. Kids who are not eating out of a power play will eventually eat if you keep putting food down in front of them. If a kid will eat cake and ice cream but not meatloaf and potatoes, they aren’t sick… they’re just kids.
I’m with Cranky, bring the child into the food making process.
My mom used trickery for a while “mom, can we have some cheetoes” “sure, kid” hands over carrot sticks, calling them cheetoes
And distraction “Mom, what’s for dinner?” “Mud and rocks for me and dad, you probbably won’t like it, but you can try some if you really want to.”
She did end up cooking modified sort of multiple meals … we never had fish (we lived in the desert) becuase it wasn’t liked and one brother had an allergy to iodine, she’d make an alternative to pinto beans for another kid, etc.
I’m a picky eater but we did the “try it” rule and eventually it was “make your own, then” …
But we eventually figured out my pickiness was habit out of self-preservation (I had some wacko stomach problems as a child and still do as an adult to some extent … for several years peanuts and pork (together or separate) gave me horrible gastro problems). So I force myself to try but I’m still a pretty boring eater.
One day I stopped liking eggs, and it was a big battle (I was six or seven?) … no jelly or katsup could make me gag them down (and it was gagging). Took a while for them to believe me, but they finally introduced cold cereal into our household. To this day I still can’t eat them No idea why after a few bites the barf factor kicks in, no matter how they are prepared (same for Mayo).
I was a generally willful, sensitive child. Not only was I a picky eater, but I was a picky dresser. (I didn’t wear jeans until puberty, the fabric was too rough on my skin. I didn’t like clothes in general, actually.)
My parents didn’t make a huge deal of it. (They soon learned to pick their battles, dinner wasn’t one of them.) I was welcome to make myself a sandwich if I deemed the family meal too much for me. I wasn’t starving, I just didn’t like tomatoes, onions, any spices, most sauces, mushrooms, fish, hard bread, and anything with an offensive texture or odor. My high sensitivity has declined as I have grown up. (I can bite into a tomato chunk with no more than a shudder. Still can’t stand pepper though.) And I have been getting adventurous, well for me, since getting to college. Low stakes opportunities to branch out help a lot. (I have recently discovered red beans and rice - form of “spicy” that I can not only handle, but love.)
I’ve always been a very picky eater, and my parents didn’t do much to try to stop me. I mostly eat bread and pasta and stuff–you know, carbs, aka Satan. I found out last year that I actually do have some food allergies, so that explains some of it. I do worry about how I’m going to survive in the real world.
My sister’s really picky too, but it’s more random and sort of ridiculous, so I think she’s mostly just being annoying.
A friend helped her son get over being a picky eater by giving him options–but she controled the options. He could choose between carrots or green beans, for example, but he had to have one of them (and she would give him a small amount if it was a “doubtful” food). Usually the main course was a given–but if she was making a sauce for chicken, she would leave it off for his portion. As her grew older, she would tell him what was for dinner, and he could elect not to have one thing.
During one rather stubborn period, she began making special “adult” meals for her and her husband, and a simple meal for their son. The forbidden food allure worked; he always wanted a taste–that’s how he ended up liking oysters and pate’ when he was young enough to still want the crusts cut off his sandwiches!
Now there’s an angle I hadn’t thought of - “Son, I klove you and I’m very concerned about your reaction to common foods. I think maybe I’ll take you into the doctor for some blood tests, and maybe run a tube down into your stomache to make sure you’re all right. I love you!”
My parents basically told my brother that he was going to eat what they made. If he had to pick out the mushrooms, ok. Just eat the rest. I guess with me being onion-allergic, they had to make so much “safe food” that they refused to play short-order cook for anyone.
My parents tried to accomodate my pickiness (ach, I just couldn’t bear to swallow certain kinds of foods… sweet vegetables like peas and pumpkin just didn’t work for me) by having me cut up raw veggies and eat those as an alternative to the cooked veggies they’d have with dinner. It worked to a certain extent, that was when I was 12 or so, so definitely old enough to be past the toddler picky stage (I ate peanut butter sandwiches and carrot sticks almost exclusively in the toddler picky stage.)
We had to try everything, and we were supposed to eat most of what was on our plate since the money was pretty tight so we couldn’t afford to waste food. On the other hand my parents were pretty good about letting us take our own serving amount so I only had to struggle through a few mouthfuls of each food I didn’t like.
I’m a relatively adventurous eater now. I still prefer my vegetables undercooked or raw, but I eat a wide range of them and eat from a wide range of cuisines. I credit a lot of that to my parents being just insistent enough, and flexible about how I ate what I was supposed to eat. I had pretty hefty food issues as a kid but really very few now. Oh yeah, and count me in with the no sugary cereals or soft drinks crowd - my mother is a nutrition freak, there was no way that stuff was getting into our diet.
The idea behind this theory is that it is an evolutionary defense mechanism. As anyone with a toddler knows, they will put anything in their mouths. Leaves and berries that contain compounds that may compromise life are often bitter or spicy. This is especially important when you are smaller–Leathal doses are related to body weight. I think there is some merit to this idea–I generally hated brussel sprouts, cabbage and some lettuces as a kid because they tasted incredibly bitter, but now love them.
As far as working with a child on his/her palate , I am not a parent yet but growing up we had a two bite rule. You had to have two consecutive bites of any food that you found distateful. It could be at the beginning, middle or end of any meal but it had to be done. (also the offending food would be only one part of the meal) It worked well, as I will try anything. (twice)
My childhood is marked by monumental food battles. There were so many foods I wasn’t allowed to eat (anything with sugar, anything with white flour) and so many foods I hated.
The whole “she won’t go hungry for days thing” might’ve worked with me before school started, but once there was a whole meal that took place outside of my parents purview, it was over. I never ate a bite of the disgusting soggy wheat bread tuna fish sandwiches my mom made for me. (Nor were they any good in trade of course). I would beg junk food from my friends, buy school lunch whenever a lick of money came my way.
Once I was old enough to go to stores by myself (probably much younger than kids would be allowed to today, say 6?), I would buy Doritos and candy with every cent I got (and some of that money was not come by …um… honestly).
By the time high school was ending I was bulimic. I can’t help but think making every mealtime a battle had something to do with this. My parents never knew I was bulimic until years after I stopped (I stopped at approximately age 25)
My policy with my kids is you don’t have to eat it, but I don’t want to hear about it. They certainly will go hungry for a mealtime often, but since breakfast and lunch are prepared with their tastes in mind they’re never going to starve.
Also, no foods are forbidden. I don’t usually buys chips or candy, but I do sometimes. They are allowed to eat as much as they want. Believe it or not they usually eat a “serving” and desist. This, seen in the light of my own history of bingeing, practically brings tears to my eyes.
I just want to submit a plea on behalf of kids who are considered ‘picky’ by their parents, simply because I used to be one.
Look, if what the kid wants/demands is totally impractical or ill-advised, then you have to take ‘corrective’ measures (such as the poster whose son wanted 1 meal a day from McDonalds, the nearest being 10 miles away); if the kid is obviously suffering some sort of ill-health because of his diet, likewise.
But in the vast majority of cases, there’s no great harm being done, and the kid may have acquired strange likes/dislikes for all sorts of reasons locked inside the child’s-eye view of the world. Please, where you can, just let it slide and realise that there’s no great harm being done, and the kid’s tastes will mature when he does. Being ‘forced’ to eat food which he doesn’t want to can be really, really traumatic and deeply unpleasant. It feels like a really harsh punishment for not having done anything wrong. How many of you, as adults, would stand for someone to make you eat something you didn’t like?
I was a very picky eater when I was little. I’m all growed up now, and I’m perfectly healthy.
The rule is “Take it or leave it, but I don’t want to hear about it.” I don’t make special meals for anyone, no, you can’t have cereal instead, eat what is served or go hungry. And nothing gets served until the next meal.
I give them all multi-vitamins so they don’t get scurvy, and I don’t want to hear what you think is “icky”. We don’t usually have dessert, and I do the shopping, so we don’t get the expensive name brands, just because you saw them on TV.
It works out OK - at least, so far. There ain’t much they don’t eat, even stuff like broccoli and spinach salad.
ISTM that trying to “fix” the picky eater of the OP is a little too late. Her parents have already given her the power by paying attention to it too much. It is going to be difficult to break the habit now, as it has become a power struggle.
Well, I can say how not to handle a picky eater: turn it into a contest of wills and demand everything to be eaten. My dad (who is admittedly mentally ill) could not throw out food ever. So, if I had a plate full of food I disliked, I had to eat the entire plate. What usually happened was a big screaming match, tears, and me sitting in the dining room with the lights out in front of a laden plate. The only way I got to go to bed was hiding the food in a napkin or putting the food in my pockets and flushing it down the toilet.
Don’t make food a power issue in your household or it will severely mess with your child’s head. I’ve had years of therapy believe me!
No idea why after a few bites the barf factor kicks in, no matter how they are prepared (same for Mayo).