My aunt got me to eat liver one time when I was a kid like that. (I don’t remember actually refusing liver, I just remember being told it was ‘Bully Beef’…I can’t remember her explaination of how that was supposed to be special…)
eleanor it’s absolutely been documented that some people are “supertasters”, they have more (or better?) taste buds than the rest of us.
My parents did that showdown thing w/my sister, too; to this day all she eats is bread and meat and milk (and vitamins).
Our kids are usually our best guides for how to be good parents; 80% of the time, their instincts are good. It’s spotting that other 20% that’s so tricky. I figure anything that causes extreme stress and chaos in the house isn’t worth it.
If you’re really worried about you’re kid’s diet, measure everything he eats over the course of a day, add up all the nutrients on a spreadsheet, and compare the totals with the recommended amounts. You may be pleasantly surprised. There’s a lot more ways to eat healthily than by following the 4 food groups, or food pyramid, or whatever the hell it is these days. (I did that once, not because I was worried, but to try to shut up a paraprofessional who was worried about the way I fed coffeekitten. His diet was fine, and, as I told her, “I don’t know if excess calcium is excreted like the water-soluble vitamins, but if it is, and you want to avoid breaking your hip when you’re a little old lady, you couldn’t do much better than drinking coffeekitten’s urine.” Unfortunately, it didn’t shut her up.)
Heh, my wife’s the same way. I always say if anything is at all tasty, if it’s not completely flavorless, she’s going to call it “spicy.” 
-FrL-
I must be a supertaster, then. See, if one element is there which I find distasteful-the whole thing is distasteful or inedible. Take green peppers-please. Hee. No, really-the flavor or green peppers permeats the entire piece of pizza, the casserole, the whatever. I imagine it’s supposed to. 
But, I don’t like it, so thus endeth that dish for me.
It is hard to imagine in this day and age, parents allowing only oatmeal. I am curious to know what kind of variety the parent’s eat…
I have heard of kids being severly anemic due to too much milk, which fills them up and interferes with their intake of other, iron rich foods. Still, vitamins are not rocket science.
Well, at least she won’t be lead-deficient.
If there’s one thing all parents welcome, it’s advice on child rearing from a non-parent like myself. But here’s my opnion on the subject:
I feel that parents need to be the ones who run the family. Issues about stubborness and food preferences are one thing. But if it gets to the point where the kid is facing dietary disorders like pellagra or scurvy, it’s time to take a stand. I’m not talking about hitting the kid. But sit him down, give him a choice of three or four different vegetables and tell him he’s not going to watch TV until he eats a plateful of one of them. Repeat as necessary using threats against video game playing, computer usage, visits to friend’s houses, and letters to Santa telling him to skip your house this year.
On a related note: why do so many kids hate beets? Kids generally love sweet food and beets are one of the sweetest vegetables (right up there with that child favorite corn). Granted they have that weird purple color but I figured that would be a plus to the under-10 crowd. Plus (again like corn) they do strange things to your poop which is the highest form of humor known to children. I’d figure beets would be one of the most popular vegetables out there.
Because they’re fucking disgusting?
Heh. And hee and haw and so forth. Also the dreaded ROTFL.
No, green ketchup is fucking disgusting. And kids love that.
Now… how did you know about our speculations that my wife is a supertaster? Is my house bugged?
Also, ditto on the green bell peppers.
-FrL-
You have to understand, and this has been indicated on this thread: Many kids, esp. at a certain age, when put in a situation like this, literally will not eat what you’ve put in front of them. They will starve first.
If that’s the case, I’m not sure it needs to be made into a thing about control or authority.
-FrL-
I totally agree with you. Even if the kid doesn’t have sensory issues, etc., the dinner table really isn’t a good place to have a power struggle. It sets up all sort of food issues for a kid when they’re being punished if they don’t eat, rewarded if they do, forced to eat more than they want, etc. Food & eating gets bogged down with emotional issues that can cause overeating or undereating later in life. The best thing that can be done is to offer a variety of healthy foods, severely limit the availability of junk food, and supplement with vitamins when needed.
Yeah, or do what my nephew’s stepdad did: take a plate of beans, and a kid who will sit in front of a plate of beans until he falls asleep in them, force his mouth open and start cramming beans into his mouth until he gags. To this day, my nephew cannot eat beans because of that. But hey, at least he didn’t get hit. :rolleyes:
And apparently, I cannot spell. That’s OF, not or and permeates, not permeats. Oy.
Oh, and add beans to the list. I will go hungry before I eat beans (not green beans-love those).
Sometimes with kids you need to fake 'em out, you need to model good behavior, you need to enforce consequences etc–the discipline approach has to be adapatble and flexible–and it means you have to be aware and paying attention, as well as anticipating future pit falls and problems. It’s no wonder that there’s a lot of poor parenting–it’s a damned hard job to do well 24/7. Then again, the degree of poor parenting is a bit startling sometimes.
Yeah, because there’s no difference between suggesting taking away a kid’s television privileges and stuffing food down their throat.
Yeah, but the line isn’t exactly clear, is it? It’s one thing if the kid just wants to eat ice cream all day - yeah, insist that they have some broccoli before they can have a Klondike bar. But that bizarre tendency of some parents to decide that when a kid doesn’t like one food, it has to become a power struggle rather than recognizing that kids have their own preferences is disturbed and a sign of how bad some parents are.
And little kids usually are picky. My understanding is that their sense of taste is considerably more acute and there’s some theories that kids very naturally have much stronger aversions to foods with funny textures and stuff than adults because a kid is more vulnerable to illness. So they’re naturally disinclined to eat the same diet as adults. Which is not to say you should feed your children nothing but “kid” foods - this whole deal with making your kid chicken nuggets and pizza three meals a day disturbs me to no end (at least when it comes to not even encouraging your kids to try new foods - I hate seeing parents do that). But there’s something bizarre and seriously disturbed about parents who decide that their kids not eating beets or lima beans has to turn into a power struggle and a chance for the parents to assert their dominance. It’s a pretty sick thing for parents to decide that demonstrating to their child that they’re in control is more important than anything else.
And again, it appears that some kids, like Bricker’s son, will say, “okay” and go without TV.
I agree that some parents go too far in trying to control their kids. But some parents don’t go far enough. A parent is supposed to be responsible for protecting their kid’s health and that includes basic nutrition. A child should not be allowed to refuse food to the point where he requires medical attention (and there have been several examples mentioned here of that being literally the case).
If a parent was dumb enough to say “The only place my little boy is happy playing is out the middle of the highway. I try to persuade him to play in the house or the yard but he just refuses. What can I do when he just flat out won’t listen?” would anybody else be saying “I guess he’s going to play in the highway then. He’ll grow out of it eventually. Or he’ll get hit by a car. Good luck.” or “Try harder to convince him to get out of the road. But whatever you do, don’t go out and pull him back to the sidewalk. Because if you do that, it’s just the same as beating him because he didn’t tie his shoes.”