I’m hoping my daughter is shopping around for other things to serve as appetizers.
BTW, in that lunch I mentioned, the kids each ate a turkey dog; potatoes; lots of crackers and rice cakes; soup - with noodles, chicken, carots celery; etc., and another Clementine. That means they each ate a whole Clementine.
The entire visit was funner than any other so far. We ate. read books played with our toys, marched around the house while I played an air drum (and mouthed the effects), and on and on. By the time we got home we were well spent, but so happy.
The grandkids are identical twin boys, 15 months old.
I’ve been of the opinion that children, like anyone else, are entitled to have a few items that they just don’t eat. I hate HATE HATE liver. Also peppers. It would be sheer torture to have to eat them. When I was a kid I did try a number of times to eat liver, but simply couldn’t get it down. My mom used to cook up a hamburger pattie for me on the liver dinner nights. [Of course, now we know liver’s not good for you after all, since it has all that cholesterol. Nyah, Nyah. But I digress.]
To make things worse, my husband has similar feelings about chicken. Yes, plain, ordinary, versatile chicken. Turkey he’ll eat, but not chicken. So if I want some, I have to cook something else for him.
With that example, if a child just hates a particular food or two, I think it’s reasonable to accomodate if at all possible. Why, yes, I often cooked two main courses when the kids were growing up.
However, we also exposed them to lots of different things and took them to a variety of restaurants as soon as they were able to behave. My youngest went through a phase where all she wanted was fried chicken and salad with Italian dressing. One evening we really wanted to go to an Indian restaurant and she was taking a fit. We told her if she sat still and behaved while the rest of us had dinner, we’d stop by her favorite fast food place on the way home. So there she sat, staring at our plates, when it occurred to her that the tandoori chicken on my plate looked and smelled mighty tasty. “Ummm… Could I have a taste of that, please?”
I read somewhere you have to put a food in front of a toddler 20 times before they’ll eat it. I’m not sure about the 20, but I do know that if you stick to your guns and keep plunking it down, they’re eventually eat it.
This, coming from a woman who fed her 2-year-old cold pizza for breakfast. Hey, you try and resist the incessant whine of the yee-ya. Yee-ya yee-ya yee-ya yee-ya yee-ya yee-ya yee-ya yee-ya…
My 2 cents on the fussy eater syndrome. I have 2 kids: a girl and a boy. Both were raised exactly the same. They’re only 17 months apart. The girl, oldest, won’t eat anything. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration since she’s still alive at 9 years old, but it is ridiculous. My son eats just about everything.
For those who blame this behavior on parents, I say you are dead wrong. We have tried and do try constantly with our daughter. In fact just last night we fought over her trying some shepherds’ pie. For 10 minutes I tried to get her to swallow the tiniest portion, and she wouldn’t. It was in her mouth the whole time, she was in tears, I was yelling… Don’t give me this shit about enabling parents. If you have kids and they eat good for you. If you have a kid like my daughter who eats like 5 things then you know the hell that this is. We can’t eat anywhere without a “special” meal for her. And again, my son will eat anything.
If your kid is hungry enough, they will eat what is available. I remember quite a few times eating things I didn’t enjoy, but ate it anyway because it was what was available. I will have to agree with the Shirley Ujest’s method, though. I’m not saying that one has to clean their plate (as that promotes bad eating habits), but they have to at least eat some of what is offered to them.
I don’t have kids, but I don’t remember my parents ever mentioning that any of the kids were fussy about eating to the point where it became a power struggle in which the parents were yelling and one of us was crying. Maybe my parents were lucky, but we generally learned that we couldn’t get away with ignoring the rules that were set in our house. I can’t imagine that three strong willed kids in one house would all go along with it unless it was a consistent consequence for specific behavior.
I seriously doubt that your child is strong willed enough to pull a Mommy Dearest and sit at the table overnight while not touching her food if you sternly mention once that she is to eat (at least a portion) of what is put in front of her.
Leaffan, with all due respect and I say this gingerly because I obviously don’t know you or your home situation: Many authorities counsel pretty strongly against getting into food-based power struggles with pre-teen/teen girls. If food refusal becomes one of the only ways the girl can exert power in her life/ feel she is disciplined and in control, she may be at high risk for developing an eating disorder.
I am another kid who was not spoiled or enabled - not with my strict parents, my god - and Just. Wouldn’t. Eat. My parents tried everything, threats, yelling, then letting me go hungry, then enticing me. The carrot and the stick, you could say. And I’d eat enough to calm her, or a few times I actually threw up when I was forced to eat. And then I’d run off and play.
Not to mention that my parents would feed me a bite, and then I’d run off to play for a few mintues, thus digesting all the food I had just eaten.
You who call these parents enablers, what do YOU suggest the parents do? Make every mealtime into a war zone? I am not lying when I say my parents didn’t let me get away with things; you would shudder if I told you how unforgiving they were and how restrictive.
Shit, I wouldn’t eat either, if someone was fighting and yelling with me. Where in this thread or any other has someone suggested that method? I totally agree with you that that won’t work.
What we’ve suggested is to STOP fighting. That’s it. Don’t fight. She won’t eat? Oh, well, there’s always breakfast. If a child truly starves herself in the long term, it’s a medical condition called anorexia, and requires medical treatment. Very few children suffer from it.
I serve three meals and two snacks a day. I note people’s preferences, and within reason, will cater to them. (I get to decide what’s “reasonable”, as I’m the cook.) If they’re old enough to wield a butter knife, peanut butter and jelly is an acceptable alternate to any meal - but they have to make it themselves. If they’re not old enough, they’ll eat at the next regularly scheduled meal or snack. That’s the whole of my program. Don’t eat? More peas for me.
Similar to Leaffan, my two children aged 2.5 and 4 have totally different tastes. Oldest is very picky. Youngest will eat anything. I never short order/make something special for Queen Picky.
Given the choice between what is served and nothing, she chooses nothing every time. I choose to pass the buck and blame daycare. They feed the kids just about every 2 hours so she’s never really all that hungry. I imagine her thinking that another chance will roll around soon if she takes a pass on this one.
And hey, no where in here did I suggest every meal time was a war zone. Everyone always gave us the same advice, she’ll eat eventually. And she does, but only about 10 fucking things, in total. And no meat of any kind.
I get pissed off easily on this topic since I’m an all out eater of anything and everything. How the hell is this girl going to approach adulthood eating like this? She’ll be ordering a grilled cheese sandwich and French fries on a first date. Impressive.
My son isn’t really a picky eater - he’ll eat almost anything - but he’s a selectively picky eater - one day he’ll love spaghetti, I’ll serve it two days later and he doesn’t want it. My strategy is pretty much what WhyNot and Shirley Ujest suggest. If he sits down to dinner and has a decent amount, then wants a snack or dessert later, fine. If he sits down to dinner and says he doesn’t want any takes one bite and complains, he can leave the table, but he’s very clearly told that he will not get anything else until the next meal. I usually wrap his dinner up and, if he’s starving before the next meal rolls around, I’ll pull the unfinished dinner out and he can eat that. Added to all this, I don’t cook meals that I know he’ll refuse (he likes a pretty good variety of healthy food, so this is pretty easy).
Not necessarily. I continued this behavior until about 11 years of age - my parents were out of their minds - and then suddenly started eating with no problem. It was almost like one day no, the next day yes. And now I am willing to try most anything once and one of the most adventurous eaters I know…the only one who can match my diversity is my SO.
I will admit though, that it was him who introduced me to a lot of these foods…but my open-mindedness that let me eat them. Now I eat things that would make my parents faint. (Crabs that were alive and crawling around in the sink an hour ago?)
Some kids will outgrow it. I haven’t met any kids that don’t outgrow it, but the ones I see who only eat the same thing are the kids that were only exposed to the same thing…I was divided equally up between American & E. Indian food, which are radically different cuisines, so I pretty much learned early that different does not mean bad.
It’s not her taking control. Really I know this. She’s otherwise a wonderful little person who does well in school and dances competitively. She has lots of freedom of choices in her life. She’s just a really, really, really picky eater. She will eat. She will eat plenty. Just a very short list of “kiddie” foods: canned pasta, Kraft Dinner, peanut butter, plain “white” spaghetti or macaroni, grilled cheese and the like.
See, this is one thing I don’t get. That not making food they’ll outright refuse, somehow is enabling them. Why would you flat-out just make something you know one member of your family hates, without any alternative?
My mom did this once in a while…made yellow dahl (er…split peas I think) with lots of smelly onions and crap and tried to get me to eat it. It was like eating puke! But at least I could eat the rice and roti (flatbread) and get by!
Leaffan, that is more variety of food than I would eat as a kid. In my defense, I think I know the reasons, too.
I spent my first four years in India with my aunt. That’s plenty of time to develope food preferences. My aunt would make spicy, yummy food, with lots of butter and oil, and it was just delicious.
My mom on the other hand when I came to the States would cook food with no oil, little salt, and totally unspicy. The food was not tasty. And American food is pretty damn bland at first…so I think the culture change was just too extreme.
Meh. I did things to spite my mom when I was angry with her as well, and one of them was not eating. I never starved, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to go out of my way to appease my mother when she picked fights with me over something. If she doesn’t want to eat, then she can either make something for herself or not eat. She’s not going to starve, and she’ll grow out of the fussy eating behavior eventually if you don’t give in to it.
