# If your kid won't eat, take him out to a restaurant. Mm hmm. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 10, 2010, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941 "2010-03-10T03:03:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/61 "2010-03-12T16:12:42Z")
It’s my impression that this wasn’t presented in a humorous light, though–they were pretty much serious about it. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/62 "2010-03-12T17:41:23Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > Would it be waaaay over the top for me to suggest that a commercial like this plays a part in normalization of bad child-rearing methods? > [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Do you really think that people are going to start reinforcing undesirable behavior from their children because of a television commercial that they saw? Are you worried that people are going to start tackling old ladies because they saw it on a Snickers commercial, or throw people out of windows if they suggest doing away with buying beer for meetings, or racing through traffic so that they can bring their child a happy meal? Do you realize how many commercials over the past several decades have humorously featured behavior that would not be good to emulate in order to sell a product? > > Also, is this the first time you’ve ever seen a commercial which suggests that if your family is unhappy with your food regimen, you ought to make them happy with a particular product? Either you’re extremely young, new to television watching, or Canada is really a wonderland of goodness and light. Responses like this is why I phrased this idea the way I did the first time I brought it into this thread - I’m not saying stupid commercials are to blame for bad parenting, but perhaps they contribute to the problem. And yes, the commercial presents it as a, “Hey, what about this?” idea. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2010, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/63 "2010-03-12T18:14:58Z")
And even if it doesn’t encourage it–that in no way people seeing their own poor practices presented as normal and acceptable will confirm for them that this is in fact a great way to rear your kids–it still can serve as \*evidence \*that such behavior \*is \*becoming normalized. ---
**Author:** ![SweetLucy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bcef8e/32.png) [@SweetLucy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SweetLucy)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/64 "2010-03-14T05:09:45Z")
😛 > [@Max\_the\_Immortal](#): > > “Boston Pizza: the restaurant full of bratty, shrieking kids and terrible parents.” Yeah, that’s exactly the atmosphere I like when I go out for dinner. Seems to describe about 95% of eating establishments ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/65 "2010-03-14T06:19:00Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Seriously. My mother always told me to eat everything on my plate, and now that I’m 27 and my metabolism has gone from a raging wildfire to a smoldering ember, this is no longer a practical method for determining how much to eat. You think you’ve got it bad? My mom told me to never let a man have his way with me or he wouldn’t respect me anymore. The first ten years of our marriage were pure hell. Then I gave in. Turns out she was right! 😃 Children who refuse to eat are inviting Mom and Dad into a game. Don’t play. When my daughter was three she poured a glass of cold milk onto her chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy. In retrospect I’m guessing this bright kid was just curious about what would happen if she did so. What happened was a young and inexperienced mom made her sit there until she ate it. But she didn’t! She sat. And sat. And sat. Longer than any three-year-old should be able to sit. Finally, a guilty mom, allowed her to get up, put the plate in the fridge and told her she would have the meal for lunch the next day. Rinse and repeat. What did she learn? I have no clue. What did Mom learn? Never enter into a power struggle with a self-assured and dutiful three-year-old or it will burn your conscience for a long time! She turned out okay in spite of the abuse. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/66 "2010-03-14T14:09:52Z")
> [@Hal\_Briston](#): > > That’s just wrong. The cure for brattiness is Benadryl, not Motrin. My mother gave me Dr Everclear’s health tonic. Boy that stuff was nasty. A glassfull shore did the trick though. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/67 "2010-03-14T17:00:58Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest there is a happy medium between letting your five year old run your household and beating him to death. Nonsense. Pick one and stick to it. That’s what’s wrong with this country: too much “shades of gray,” namby-pambiness. ---
**Author:** ![Flutterby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Flutterby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flutterby)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/68 "2010-03-14T17:48:13Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > Heh. But… why not name it after New York, or Chicago? They’re both more justifiably famous for good pizza. Pizza in Boston is a bad imitation of New York style pizza. We do have Chicago Deep Dish, their pizza is much better, IMO, than Boston Pizza, and much better priced for my budget also. Finally saw this commercial yesterday (don’t watch much tv so not much opportunity to catch it). My peeve, beyond the ‘if they won’t eat at your table bring them to ours’ thing\* is that there is next to nothing on his plate! They’re fighting over a spoonful of peas! If all that is left on my son’s plate is a spoonful of food, I’m not too worried. He ate the rest, he’ll eat something else tomorrow and maybe have an extra serving of veggies because he likes those ones so much. But I guess I’m lucky since my son loves most veggies I bring home so if he won’t eat the asparagus one day it’s a pretty good bet he’ll eat the broccoli the next. \*Yeah they are selling food but Boston Pizza is a treat, and one reason we like it because it is _extremely_ easy to find coupons for free kids meals as well as us enjoying the food in general. My son asks to go to the pizza store regularly, just like he asks to go to McDonald’s. Doesn’t mean we will all the time. ---
**Author:** ![RheaDark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/edb3f5/32.png) [@RheaDark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RheaDark)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/69 "2010-03-15T23:02:07Z")
> [@Gangster\_Octopus](#): > > What you are missing in that the parental double cross, they took the kid to get pizza, sure, but it was spinach and liver pizza!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Ha. When I was a kid, my favorite meal was liver and onions. ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/70 "2010-03-15T23:52:13Z")
> [@RheaDark](#): > > Ha. When I was a kid, my favorite meal was liver and onions. Not only did I like liver and onions, I also liked spinach. I was a weird kid (and have maintained that standard well into late middle age). ---
**Author:** ![RheaDark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/edb3f5/32.png) [@RheaDark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RheaDark)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/71 "2010-03-16T01:48:14Z")
> [@LurkMeister](#): > > Not only did I like liver and onions, I also liked spinach. I was a weird kid (and have maintained that standard well into late middle age). Spinach makes my mouth feel funny, and I’ve no idea why. I’ve stopped eating it out of fear that I’m allergic. More’s the pity. I love(d) spinach quiche. ---
**Author:** ![Baby\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@Baby\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baby_Driver)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/72 "2010-03-16T14:45:19Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > Unfortunately, [these findings](http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v13/n1/full/oby200512a.html) definitely apply to me. If there’s more food on the plate, I will eat more. [Hijack] I took a class with Brian Wansink (head researcher in this report). Great prof, great guy. He told us a funny anecdote about how one of the study participants decided to pick up the bowl of soup and drink it, Viking-style. The tube attached to the bottom of the bowl came loose and spewed soup all over the table.[/Hijack] ---
**Author:** ![overlyverbose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9dc877/32.png) [@overlyverbose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/overlyverbose)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/73 "2010-03-16T16:42:28Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > Lots of people don’t know how to cook, or how to pick out groceries. The latter is important- if you buy low-quality produce or meat, even the best chef in the world is going to have a hard time getting them to taste good. > > If there are foods your kid will eat in a restaurant but not at home, that’s a big hint that they might not dislike that food, but dislike the way you cook it. Find a good cookbook (Mark Bittman’s _How to Cook Everything_ is good for this) and find out how it’s supposed to be cooked. Find some other ways to cook it. I also think that most parents don’t market food enough to their kids or make it standard to have certain food groups (or a variety thereof) available. We “spin” our vegetables and have a mandatory no-thank-you bite for new or unfamiliar foods. Everyone knows that broccoli florets are monkey trees. In our house, anyway. And if our son doesn’t want to eat something, as long as he tries one bite, he’s off the hook for the rest of the meal. We make sure he’s got something on his plate that he’ll eat before we serve it to him so if he doesn’t like something, no one gets bent out of shape. And we don’t serve him something we wouldn’t eat ourselves and make a great effort not to make “kid food” the standard. As for the pizza commercial - yeah, I can see that being annoying. If our son throws a fit about food at home (or really anything), we don’t go out unless absolutely necessary. We certainly don’t get him anything special to eat. But, as mentioned up-thread, the pizza company doesn’t give a crap about that. Most companies also don’t care about negatively stereotyping men as beaten-down, inept doofuses incapable of doing anything for themselves. They also seem to delight in stereotyping women as superwomen (look! she can work, dote on her husband _and_ do all the cooking, cleaning and childcare, all with a condescending smile) or as flighty idiots who are just waiting to fall in love with a shiny new washer/dryer set (don’t worry - your husband will thank you, especially when he realizes how much money you saved!). Ugh. Just thinking about it pisses me off. Now where did I put that apron that matches my adorable pencil skirt and four-inch heels? I _must_ go home and vacuum after this conference call! ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/74 "2010-03-16T18:03:30Z")
> [@overlyverbose](#): > > \They also seem to delight in stereotyping women as superwomen (look! she can work, dote on her husband _and_ do all the cooking, cleaning and childcare, all with a condescending smile) or as flighty idiots who are just waiting to fall in love with a shiny new washer/dryer set (don’t worry - your husband will thank you, especially when he realizes how much money you saved!). Ugh. Just thinking about it pisses me off. Now where did I put that apron that matches my adorable pencil skirt and four-inch heels? I _must_ go home and vacuum after this conference call! Aaaaand…[the relevant xkcd comic!](http://www.xkcd.com/714/) 😃 (NSFW for language) ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/75 "2010-03-16T18:59:43Z")
> [@overlyverbose](#): > > or as flighty idiots who are just waiting to fall in love with a shiny new washer/dryer set Hey, you don’t have to be flighty to fall in love with a shiny new washer/dryer set. I just like toys! (And believe me, after close to a decade of carting baskets of clothes up and down stairs and through rape alleys with giant pocketfulls of quarters to get my laundry done, a washer and dryer of my very own \*definitely \*qualify as toys. :D) ---
**Author:** ![araminty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b5e925/32.png) [@araminty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/araminty)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/76 "2010-03-16T20:12:50Z")
> [@RheaDark](#): > > Spinach makes my mouth feel funny, and I’ve no idea why. I’ve stopped eating it out of fear that I’m allergic. > > More’s the pity. I love(d) spinach quiche. Fear not! [It’s oxalic acid.](http://www.learninghowtocook.com/blog/2009/03/spinach-mouth/) ---
**Author:** ![overlyverbose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9dc877/32.png) [@overlyverbose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/overlyverbose)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2010, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/77 "2010-03-16T20:55:28Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Hey, you don’t have to be flighty to fall in love with a shiny new washer/dryer set. I just like toys! (And believe me, after close to a decade of carting baskets of clothes up and down stairs and through rape alleys with giant pocketfulls of quarters to get my laundry done, a washer and dryer of my very own \*definitely \*qualify as toys. :D) Fair enough. I, too, like my toys and get ridiculously excited at new appliances. I was thinking more along the lines of the LG commercial with the woman in the red coat and handbag holding the dog in the red shirt getting shown the shiny red washer/dryer set and hugging them. Though I must admit to having cuddled my coffee pot when I first pulled it out of the box. Ah, memories… ---
**Author:** ![put\_down\_the\_sabre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/da6949/32.png) [@put\_down\_the\_sabre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/put_down_the_sabre)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941/78 "2010-03-17T13:37:58Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Seriously. My mother always told me to eat everything on my plate, and now that I’m 27 and my metabolism has gone from a raging wildfire to a smoldering ember, this is no longer a practical method for determining how much to eat. Cook less. pdts [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-kid-wont-eat-take-him-out-to-a-restaurant-mm-hmm/531941.md?page=3)