Parents who fed their child ONLY oatmeal need their faces ripped off.

The BBQ Pit
41

I have one like that, too. Youngest’s picture may be found next to “omnivore” in the dictionary. He doesn’t care for potatoes in any form particularly. Still, he will eat them when they are all that’s on offer.

I also have one who is now just started to expand his meal choices, having gone through about three years of limiting them quite severely. As a toddler Eldest ate everything also. Around three and a half was when it began. He’s about six and a half now.

Both were fed whatever we were having from the time it had to be put through a blender first. Both quite like spicy food. Both have been recipient of the “here’s what we are having” school of dinner.

Go figure.

42

Ooooooh, yes. My three year old will eat ANYTHING, but it has to be dipped. I make chicken noodle soup (the homemade kind) and put his vegetables/chicken/noodles in one bowl and the broth in another so that he can dip everything into it. He looooooooves salad…I put a little dressing in a bowl and he goes to town dipping his salad. Everything I put on the table is dippable.

43

I think it’s all in the spin. What we told WhyKid when he was little was, “If you’re not hungry enough to finish your dinner, then you’re not hungry enough for desert.” Simple enough, and not really a lie, either. We’d also do things like split the offending food into two piles and let him pick one to eat (or let him split them and I’d choose which one he ate - he learned pretty quickly to make even piles or he’d be eating the larger one!) We’d also tell him, “Well, when you’re older you’ll probably like that. I didn’t like it when I was a little kid either.” A week later, he’d declare that he was “older now!” and would try the food again, because he didn’t want to be a little kid! Our only food “rule” was (is) that you have to eat three bites of any new food before deciding you don’t like it. This goes for the adults as well as the kids.

But if he really really, dug his heels in, as he occasionally did, then it was up to him to make himself something else, usually a PB+J, or to skip the meal. I am not a short order cook. He did go through a period of eating 3 PB+J’s a day for about two weeks. He’s never held out longer than that.

44

Baby Madeline is 11 months old and will eat anything. She doesn’t seem to like peas much, that’s about it.

I’ll enjoy it while I can; pickiness usually comes around 2/3 years old. This thread just makes me appreciate it more while it lasts.

45

I have one sister who’s, there’s no nice way to say this, a terrible mother. Her kids will probably be murderers or suicides. This saddens me, but it’s true. *Her * kids will eat nothing but macaroni, hot dogs, and pizza.

I have another siste who’s a pretty good mom; *her * kids are all great, gonna go far. One of them will eat absolutely anything. As a little kid he liked mustard and onions on his sandwiches. Her other kid will eat anything but peanuts, to which she is fatally allergic.

I have no way of knowing if there’s a correlation. But when I’m feeling judgmental, I find myself imagining that there is.

46

Wait, that came across way wrong.

I don’t mean to suggest that if your kid is picky, you’re a terrible parent. I meant that it seems likely to me that effort and attention will be rewarded in most such cases.

No doubt with exceptions.

47

I’m not sure if this is true or common, but I feel that I was a picky eater because my parents would modify the food I liked to make it more healthy. This got me to not trusting the food I got, and I’m sure made any problems far worse.
These modifications were like using whole wheat pasta instead of regular. Adding soya into mince recipies, adding carrots and peas into foods (rather than serving them as side vegitables). Also parents seem to assume children will only like certain kinds of food, and not like adult foods. I liked Chicken Kiev and Greek coffee from the age of about 5, luckily having got a chance at them.

48

My kids list is, when I think about it, pretty much the same as the others listed, and I’m lazy, so I’ll just say that he probably does get a balanced diet of sorts, if you look at it over a week’s time. There are some days he seems not to eat much at all, some days when he does. I won’t go as far as saying he has any kind of ODD, but he can be one tough cookie when he wants to be. I figure it will serve him well later; me and my wife, not so much right now. :wink:

49

Eh, I dunno. We have nothing but whole grain stuff in the house because I have a tendency to low blood sugar and Oma has diabetes. So when Eldest started in with the “won’t eat” thing, he “wouldn’t eat” anything but lamb curry with brown rice. He couldn’t choose (for instance) chicken nuggets as he had never had any. He had never had any because I don’t like them so I didn’t buy them.

I do think that if I thought as a child that my parents “did something” to normal food just because I was being difficult, I would have like – er, exploited that.

50

Dad brings my sister a glass of orange juice
Sis: But I don’t like orange juice!
Dad: Okay, then, I’ll get you something else.
goes to the kitchen, returns holding the same glass
Sis: Daddy, I don’t like orange juice!
Dad: This is punsquello juice, honey!
Sis: Oh, okay!
proceeds to drink it happily

51

So I take it your sister was the good looking one?

52

I can imagine someone thinking that their kid’s biology surely wouldn’t allow the kid to focus in on a single food if it wasn’t giving them all the nutrition they need.

There are a lot of people who think food preferences reflect physiological needs, so it’s not hard for me to think some people might go for this line of reasoning.

-FrL-

53

My kids are the only kids I know who don’t like carbs like rice, potatoes, bread, and plainish noodles. I don’t know why that is, but both of them will pick out the rice and eat all the meat and veggies, while some moms I know struggle to get their kids to eat anything besides potatoes and rice and noodles. The older one (6) is big on toast though, now that she can use the toaster.

54

Some people just don’t have the sense to be parents. To them, the rationale for the oatmeal probably seemed reasonable. Stupid, yes, but if you don’t have a knowledgeable person helping you, you can make some really bad mistakes in parenting on a daily basis- getting the formula too hot, not handling diaper rash properly, etc. If it turns out it wasn’t abuse or neglect, I wouldn’t be too hard on them, but I would see to it they learn what the hell to do.

55

My mom still has some kind of trauma whose origin I have not yet identified, of thinking I will not eat random foods. The other day she was convinced I hated Chinese food. She actually said, “Oh, that’s such a nice restaurant, but I know you don’t like Chinese food.” Actually, I quite like Chinese food, and she and I have gone out for Chinese together.

I think I was a pretty normal kid in terms of food preferences. I ate most everything that was put in front of me, except for: tomatoes, peppers, fish (except for fishsticks) or seafood of any kind, and mushrooms. Actually, most of these I still don’t like, although I do like shrimp now and I’ve kind of eased up on the peppers.

56

The part of rasing a kid that applies here is from age 0 to about 2. If you ain’t got it done by then, you are not going to. A disorder like ODD is a different ball game…

YMMV

57

For some things, I agree. But all three of my kids ate most anything until they hit the terrible 2’s, then the whole picky thing started. My almost 2 yo daughter eats anything; my 8 year old has become less picky, so maybe it’s just a phase (one can only hope).

58

Bricker, have you thought of giving him milk in one of those sports bottles that you can also suck on, as well as squirt? (Or would that be a disaster in the making when he figures out he can paint the walls?) Do you think he might be tempted to drink chocolate milk, strawberry Quik, or regular milk from one of those? What about Ovaltine? Have you tried that yet? He might drink Ovaltine made with milk…

59

I read that toddlers’ brains are burning something like 3x the glucose that adults use – which might explain my kids’ preference for fruits and starchy vegetables. My twins (2.5 yrs old) won’t eat meat (chicken nuggets being the exception), but do love yogurt and cottage cheese, and will eat an occasional Boca Burger. My son used to eat hummus on rice cakes and my daughter loved kidney beans — until just after they turned 2.

I haven’t had a lot of luck w/vitamins - you’ve really got to watch those for the under-4 set, a whole “kid’s” vitamin has way too much iron and can be dangerous, you’ve got to break them in half.

Instead, I rely on Cheerios, Rice Chex and cornflakes. They love to snack on them.

Vitamin-fortified goldfish (those little Pepperidge Farm crackers) would be a great idea, toddlers eat them by the vat.

60

I think some here are forgetting something.

Kids are their own people–for all the talk of blank slates and malleable characters etc, kids know themselves (to a certain extent). It is not all up to the adult in the scenario.

If you have a risk averse kid or one with high sensitivity taste buds or a combo of both, food can become a struggle. My oldest never had a food issue-she eats everything and will try anything. My second was reluctant to try stuff, but has expanded his horizons. He still will not eat anything with nuts in it or peanut butter (no allergy; he doesn’t like the texture or taste-but he will eat Nutella). My third child won’t eat sandwiches-which makes lunch problematic. He will eat the components of sandwiches, but not the actual sandwich.

Kids don’t automatically become picky at age 2, but that is when a bunch of things converge-independence, separation, and expanding food horizons. Makes for interesting meals at times.

Re the “bad parent”, lazy parent, weak willed parent thing-I think it’s an easy out. Sure, the OP’s example is of poor parenting, but they are an extreme example. Most parents muddle through, and most parents recognize transient willfulness vs a formidable opponent.

I was just such a child. Taste, texture, temperature, crunch factor, aftertaste–all were huge issues for me. There are still many fruits and veggies that literally make me gag. I think that the many, many nights of me sitting in front of stone cold okra has something to do with my distaste for it. Ditto plums, which my dad placed in my mouth*, and made me promptly vomit my entire dinner over the table. I never cried or carried on-still don’t-I simply refused to eat X. Very rarely, I would try X and find it palatable. This is true today. Perhaps my taste buds were shot off in the war, but a lot of food seems too spicey to me. Not as in hot, but too many “taste sensations” for this tongue. I have no doubt that some of the kids mentioned here have the same experience.
I am a big believer in vitamin supplements as an insurance policy. I would rather present the food, and move on, than make it an issue. My kids are older (8, 14 and 17), but when they were little, I did the same. They all eat a more varied diet than I do.

*he didn’t force it into my mouth. Looking back, they were frustrated and angry at my perversness (ity?). They are very controlling people, but were stymied by this. I say this from a retrospective viewpoint-it never occurred to me then.