After reading some of this stuff, I don’t feel so bad about my 4yo being so picky. It’s also encouraging that my 8yo is expanding his horizons.
I have to disagree about calling parents of picky eaters bad. Some surely are, but sweeping generalizations about that are uncalled for and ignorant.
Children are human beings, not robots designed to obey instructions. Pick up a damn child psychology book sometime; you might learn something.
I have a 2 year old who will eat pretty much anything. I am trying to come up with something he just outright refuses to ever eat and I can’t think of anything. The only thing I can say that we did was I never made him “kid meals” like mac and cheese or hot dogs seperate from what we were eating. I mean, he has had those things on occasion but from the beginning he ate exactly what we ate (the only thing I do is turn the chili spiciness down a notch for him.) Since we don’t eat hot dogs and mac and cheese very often he got used to eating other things. We eat more strongly flavored food than others in my family and I think he got used to that, maybe breastfeeding him helped since I am sure some of the flavors come through that way and he seems to have a palate like mine, he likes things like pickles and olives and garlic that are my favorite flavors too.
My niece and nephew are much more limited in what they like but their parents are too. So I do think that environment has something to do with it. I don’t force my child to eat if he doesn’t want to, but I won’t give him ice cream if he hasn’t eaten dinner either. But we don’t have dessert very often at our house, it’s more of a special occasion treat so dessert isn’t really ever brought up as a reward. I try not to use food as a reward.
My son was using a sippy cup just fine by 7 months, he outright refused a bottle (so I am aware that kids have a mind of their own) and I nursed him until he was one and then straight on to milk and cups. My pediatrician advised kids be done with bottles by age 1 because it is bad for their teeth in a way that nursing isn’t, especially if they take them to bed. The milk pools around their teeth and the sugar in it causes tooth decay.
I hated asparagus when I was a kid, because all I’d ever had was frozen asparagus (which has a weird texture and an off-taste) or disgusting mushy canned asparagus. When I finally tried fresh asparagus as an adult, I found I actually liked it, though only if it’s good asparagus in season (I still won’t touch that frozen or canned crap).
Artichokes don’t travel well, and are another vegetable that shouldn’t be eaten out of season. If Happy Wanderer’s friend grew up somewhere far away from California (where almost all artichokes sold in the US are grown), it’s not too surprising that he never had one, or if he had had one, it might not have been very good- artichokes can be bitter, and bitter artichokes are nasty.
Brussels sprouts are another vegetable that I hated as a kid, but like now. But only fresh brussels sprouts (none of that abomination that is frozen brussels sprouts) in season, and not overcooked like most people tend to do them. They don’t have that strong sulfurous taste or icky mushy texture if you don’t overcook them, and without those, they can be good.
It’s hard to find good avocados in some parts of the country, too- my mom (in western Maryland) has a terrible time finding decent ones. I don’t even know if the markets near her carry pre-made guacamole. Maybe that’s why those kids had never had them?
Maybe some people who are dealing with picky eaters should try getting fresh, in-season vegetables instead of frozen or canned, and try cooking them in different ways, to see if the picky eater will like them better another way? The quality of vegetables can make a huge difference for a picky eater.
Or try frozen vegetables instead of canned, or vice versa- I like frozen peas (especially with pearl onions or, even better, caramelized onions- mmmm…), but hate canned peas (because of the weird taste and disgusting mushy texture of canned peas). And there are picky eaters who like cooked vegetables, but not raw ones (I’m one of those- the only raw vegetables I like are avocados, mushrooms, and non-iceberg lettuces), even though the reverse seems to be more common.
And to picky eaters out there- it might not actually be some food that you dislike, but the way you’ve had it prepared.
Huh. This family is in Maryland. Maybe that’s part of it. But I purchased the avocado I used in a grocery store near their house; if avocados are harder to find in Maryland than in Michigan, I’m a bit surprised. Given the magic of refrigerated plains flying in from Argentina, I’m surprised if many places can’t have at least passable avocados, even if they’re not quite as good as the ones you’d find if you lived in southern California or Mexico.
Absolutely. But it sure seems like, from what’s posted here, most parents don’t have major problems with picky eaters unless they create them themselves. All children are a bit picky about their food - I certainly was, at least compared to how I am now, but it seems to me that the real pathological cases of kids eating only about four foods are most frequently the result of parents not modeling good behavior or encouraging them to eat normal foods. After all, you might not have liked canned asparagus (I had no idea such a thing existed. I bet it’s godawful.) But you also don’t seem to have been one of those kids who grew up on nothing but pizza and chicken nuggets. I think real picky kids are a class apart from people like you or me.
As I say, the only kids I have seen who really got down to a very few foods were not so much about parents modeling good behavior or encouragement but were more about power and control issues.
As a disclaimer, my view may well be skewed as my own experience comes from, well, my own childhood in which we moved approximately annually; my family’s life which was indeed rather unavoidably chaotic during the time my child was limiting his diet; and my clients’ lives during a time I worked with children whose families were involved in high conflict divorce or ongoing custody battles. So I have no real experience with “ordinary” picky eaters, only high-stress picky eaters.
For them I can only say, keep putting it on the table, don’t make a federal case out of it, and give them a multivitamin.
I’ve been thinking about picky eating during my parents’ recent visit. I have a new theory of it, that there are two distinct dimensions of pickiness. One is picky eaters who don’t like certain ingredients because of taste, texture, or what have you. The other is picky eaters who are unwilling to try any unfamiliar cuisines, independent of what ingredients might be in them. I thought of this because I’m picky, especially about textures, but I’m generally willing to try an ethnic cuisine I’ve never had before (if I can find a dish that doesn’t include something I don’t like). My parents, on the other hand, are very unadventurous picky eaters- while they were visiting us, they only wanted to go to restaurants that serve American food or maybe Italian-American. Throw in the additional wrinkle of me and Mr. Neville keeping kosher (my parents don’t, they’re not Jewish), so we have to find a restaurant with vegetarian or kosher fish choices that we’ll eat, and it gets interesting. Actually it doesn’t, it gets pretty boring.
I suspect that the super-picky-eaters come from a combination of both of those. If your kid is naturally picky about food tastes and textures, and learns from you to be an unadventurous eater, there can be problems. Fortunately for me, one of the aspects of my rebelliousness against my parents was rejecting their unadventurous eating style and generally preferring ethnic food to American food. (We ended up getting some sort of ethnic takeout almost every night the week after my folks left, just because we had missed eating those things when we were eating with them.) Mom, at least, definitely got her unadventurous eating style from her parents- her father didn’t ever want to go to a restaurant unless he knew beforehand what he was going to order there.
Hopefully it doesn’t exist any more. It is well beyond godawful.