I actually have a Clemintine tree. It’s inside for the winter but it just flowered and it looks like it will be producing a considerable amount of fruit this summer.
As to the picky eaters I don’t seem to remember many picky eaters as a kid. Nobody I know got mac and cheese or hot dogs when they didn’t like dinner. You ate or your didn’t that was it. But then that was before schools sold junk food all day long.
The one thing I can say is that picky eaters are rare in large families. I’m the oldest of five kids. Only eight years seperates me from my youngest sister. We were a working class family so food wasn’t scarse but the budget was limited. You ate what you were given and you ate fast if you wanted seconds. This became an issue when my brothers and I were all teens at the same time. For most of the 80’s leftovers were non existant in our house. My parents treated us much the same as WhyNot does. Eat it or go to bed hungry.
Because this is how we did it in the “old days.” My Mum made one meal, and by God we ate it, whether it was liver or “mince and tatties” or curried lamb, or beef pie. We have tried, and tried, and tried, and tried to convince Leafgirl to eat, or at least try other things to no avail. You have no idea how good it made me feel to read your post stating that you were like that and magically switched overnight. (Crosses fingers.)
and i know where you are coming from, all my meals have to have a starch, like a pasta, penne, shells, macs, thin spagh and angelhair, grated parma and butter or marg. Rice and couscous is also acceptable, peferably unseasoned. Side dish for this child is pickles or green olives, claims to like carrots. No meat ever in any form except freezer chxn strips, bacon and sausage. Dont try too fancy it up. Veggies ? maybe raw and nibbled only. Does go crazy for fruit in season, no problem there.
Milk must be chocolate, yogurt is good as is cottage cheese.
I keep the pressure off, focus instead on manners and helping with the chow duties.
One of my best friends when I was in junior high was a girl who was the oldest of 7 kids. I am an only child. I went over her house for lunch one summer day. Her mom made a huge pile of PB&J sandwiches, and before she set them on the table, she drew me aside and told me, “I know you are an only child, so you aren’t used to this. When I set this platter down on the table, I want you to get in there and grab a sandwich, because if you don’t, you might not get anything. Now go for it.”
I know things about this. I know because I was one, and because I have one. I also know parents who agreed with you, whose first children would eat just about anything within reason, who have a subsequent child who is picky, and completely changed their tune.
Imagine some kind of food that you find absolutely repulsive. Maybe grasshoppers, or puppy meat. Imagine someone telling you you had to eat that, and withholding food until you got hungry enough to do so. If my personal experience is any guide, that is how bad a reaction picky kids can have to loathed foods. It doesn’t matter that to adults, the food seems benign - to the kid, it is horrifying.
I still remember my parents took me to a nice restaurant for my sixteenth birthday (yes, sixteen!) and I ordered beef wellington, expecting steak and puff pastry. Turned out it had some mirepoix on top of the steak. My dinner was ruined. I had to stifle tears. I wasn’t reacting like that to get attention or make people do what I wanted. I was miserable and humiliated. Don’t get me started on the anxiety caused by sleepovers or dinner at a friend’s house. There were plenty of times I subsisted on bread alone.
Now I eat pretty much anything in the normal American diet. I don’t like green peppers, but I no longer have an emotional reaction like that if I find they’re in my food. But it took me a long time to evolve to this point, and it was gradual. No one is more relieved than I am! But at least I have empathy for my picky kid.
FTR, my kid only dislikes three foods: fruit, vegetables, and meat.
Yeah, I can’t exactly quibble with the way you’ve been handling things. I usually find that parents are too enabling but from your posts you seem to have been reasonable about everything. All I know is when I grew up (I’m 31) I had no choice in matters of food. None. My parents both come from poor backgrounds in Eastern Europe and just having meat on the table every day was a small accomplishment for them. Either you ate the food in front of you, or you’d get slapped in the face or go hungry (or both). “I don’t like liver/kidney/blood sausage” was simply not an option. Needless to say, I’m perhaps the least fussy eater I know.
Would I be this way with my kids? Probably not. I just hope that I have kids that share my excitement about food and eating so I don’t have to deal with power struggles over food.
Incidently, In one of the bajillion parenting magazines & books I read, I remember a blurb about the size of a childs stomach is about equal to the size of their fist.
Moving to smaller plates has helped the food battles around here alot.
Supposedly, Captain Cook did something similar to get his crew members to eat sauerkraut (which prevented scurvy) when they didn’t want to. He initially restricted it to the officers’ tables, which made the crew members want to eat it.
Now, I may not personally know their kid, but any person I knew that was hungry enough would eat any food put in front of them, no matter how gross, as long as it was culturally accepted as a food. When one becomes hungry enough, one will eat what is provided in front of them without complaint.
Maybe it’s that I came from parents who didn’t put up with kids who didn’t want to touch the foods on their plates. Maybe it’s because we ate stuff on occasion that most Americans I know think is weird. I don’t recall them ever having to argue with me over eating something, even if I didn’t like it. I just had to eat something, and my choice was out of what was presented to me at dinner.
And you had no problem eating what was put in front of you. Got it. But what argument are you offering?
-FrL-
*Okay that’s cryptic. What I mean is: What the heck does a toddler know about what’s “culturally accepted as food?” For all I know, asking a kid to eat green beans is like asking and adult American to eat grasshoppers.
I wasn’t being made to eat cockroaches when I knew from observation that those weren’t food items. Maybe I’m reaching a bit, but I’d assume that any toddler that’s been able to observe what their parents eat over the couple of years they’ve been alive has made some observations about what their family considers food and what is not considered food. Are you honestly assuming that kids that age are too stupid to know what their families consider food?
Arguing with a kid over what they eat isn’t going to help the matter, as has been stated before. Now, as Shirley Ujest had mentioned before, the issue is to give them a choice. As a toddler, the choice is to eat what’s in front of you or don’t eat and don’t expect any accommodations. She summed it up as “You don’t eat now, you don’t get a snack later. You go to bed hungry. It is your choice.” However, once the kid gets old enough and can be trusted to prepare food for themselves, their choices expand to “eat what’s in front of you,” “don’t eat,” or “make something else, but I’m not making it for you.” It should only have to be said once or twice to get the point across, and not made into a discussion for it to be effective. Nagging never solved anything, IMO.
