I just want to live to see him eat salad. Is that asking so much?
December 19, 2006Just about one year ago, I wrote about Henry’s maddeningly limited food preferences. Henry was a strict adherent to the all-dairy, all-white-with-a-little-light-yellow-in-it diet, claiming that it “tasted good” and also “I’m not trying anything else ever nyah nyah nyah.” Any attempts to introduce new foods were met with shrieks of protest. It was a fun time.
Since that post, Scott and I have employed different strategies to get him to eat new foods. We created an enormous New Food Chart, with shiny gold stickers for each food and the promise of a new toy when 10 stickers were achieved. On the recommendation of some expert or other, we tried making the tasting of new foods his “job,” with no rewards given except the satisfaction of a job well done. We tried reverse psychology (“don’t you dare eat that broccoli stalk. I mean it.”). We tried explaining the food pyramid and what foods would make him big and strong like a Rescue Hero. We tried begging.
Guess what worked?
Nothing. Nothing worked. In fact, I do believe we made it worse. Congratulations, feckless parents!
In this entire year, Henry has pretty much stuck to his original diet. He added two new foods to his repertoire: baked beans and grilled cheese. The latter makes it much easier to go out to eat. The former means at least he’s getting some fiber, albeit with more sugar than I like to think about. True, these foods would not have entered his repertoire without our cajoling, but looking back, I think we won a couple of battles but in doing so lost the damn war.
Here’s what we accomplished: Henry now knows how deeply we care about what he eats. He knows it’s pretty much the one thing we can’t make him do. And most of all, he knows that he’s got us. He now delights in telling me all about what he’s not going to eat. He tried tomato sauce and loved it, but now, he says, he’s never going to eat it again. Same thing for peanut butter. And carrots. And pierogi. And about 36 other items.
(Parents of younger children, take note: do not give your child even the merest hint that you give a flying fig about what they eat. Don’t even look at their plate. Serve them whatever you made (or ordered) (or microwaved) and consider your job done. Because I am telling you, once your kid senses that they have the upper hand, you’re done. Heed my words! Heeeed! )
So now that every one of our tactics has backfired, I have officially given up. I have ripped up the food chart. I am done begging and punishing and even suggesting. I told him that what he eats is entirely up to him, but that I would no longer make him a different dinner from ours.
We’ve been doing this for about a month, and it’s made absolutely not one smidgen of difference in his diet. I more or less wimp out every night and make some kind of a pasta with dinner—the difference being that it’s part of everyone’s dinner and not just his special foodstuff—so he eats that. So in other words he’s not eating differently, but I am, and sweet Moses I’m sick of macaroni and cheese. (At some point I will gather up the courage to make a dinner that doesn’t include one of his greatest hits, and deal with his keen disappointment at the absence of beige foods laid out before him. I’m sure he’ll go without dinner that night, but at the very least he has to learn that it’s not the end of the world. Right? Someone’s anecdote of their kid who never ate anything and now eats snails cooked in tripe would be appreciated just about now.)
The only thing left for me to do is just be okay with what he eats or doesn’t eat. I am trying, lord how I’m trying, to think positively. What he likes, he really, really likes. And that’s good. He could eat 56 containers of yogurt a day. He derives more satisfaction from blueberries than I previously believed possible. He gets positively dewy-eyed over the thought of pasta mixed with ricotta cheese. If I keep pushing, I’m going to dampen his enthusiasm for what little he does eat, and pretty soon he will eat nothing but sand. Just to spite me. Kids are nuts, did I mention?
So these days when he refuses any and all foods I do my best to laugh gaily, tra la, as if he just told me he’s not going to do my taxes. And I say, “Someday you’ll eat that,” and he agrees. “Someday,” he says, watching me for signs of discomfort, “but not now. And not soon.”
Reader Comments (105)
It could help, unless you've already read it.
Good luck!
In fact, now I think about it, a lot of my brother's further exploration of food came when he had to shop for himself and he started buying exotic things at the deli counter. Might giving Henry some input into shopping or meal preparation give him something to think about? Bearing in mind of course, that I'm comparing an adult with a little boy and that I'm not a parent, so I may just be talking rubbish.
I also had a 3 year-old who ate next to nothing.
Now he's four & eats even less (if that's possible).
I shouldn't say he eats "less." But some of the things that were once on his list have now dropped off the charts. Spaghetti comes to mind. But why? What causes a four year-old to suddenly drop a beloved food for no apparent reason?
The knowledge that he's bugging the crap out of his mother, that's what.
I, too, have pretty much given up. When my kid enters school, I'm going to pack him a lunch of fruit snacks (damn those things!), crackers, dry cereal and ? No clue.
My mom took me to the doctor who told her to feed me something else, and that even if I didn't eat it immediately, I would eventually get hungry and eat it. Within a week (and after a tough couple of days for her), I was eating all sorts of non-hotdog and non-orange juice foods.
These days, I can't think of a cuisine I don't like.
I'm with Mir - just fix what you want for supper and he will either eat it or not. A missed meal or two won't hurt him and he'll figure out that he hasn't got that button to push anymore.
I guess what I'm saying is, hang in there. He'll grow out of it eventually.
Lately, I will not eat chicken. Something about it just grosses me out. I don't eat pork or mayonnaise and I will not drink a glass of plain water unless there is nothing else available to soothe my parched throat.
I am hell, HELL, to take to dinner because I'm so picky I'll generally only order the steak (unless it's char-broiled, eww) or whatever comes with mashed potatoes.
In other words, good luck with your picky eater.
Nowadays, he eats (or doesn't - he's perfectly healthy) whatever I make.
(And when we started this, I was a mess for about a week, imagining him starving with rickets or scurvy or something dreadful. It took two days of him figuring out I was serious (no backing down - no desserts, no extra yogurt or big glass of milk so he wouldn't collapse from hunger) for him to eat. Slowly, begrudgingly, but the kid ate.)
Now - healthy! Asking for seconds! Trying things!
I'm pretty sure I told you this a year ago, but we read "How to get your kids to eat, but not too much," and it changed my life. In fact, I think it's time to read it again.
Haven't read the other one, which reluctant housewife mentions above, but I'm sure it's on a par. My daughter has made many meals of only bread w/ butter.
I am totally with you. I fix a lot of pasta dishes at our house so my kids will have one dish they will eat on the table. My husband ate nothing but hot dogs and cranberry juice for a year and is healthy as a horse now. My older child, now a teenager, has huge variety of things she tries and eats and I have every confidence that my 11-year-old will do that as well. My idea is that I don't want a power stuggle over food and I am willing to operate a short order kitchen so I am ok with it. The question is are you ok with it? If not then do something about it, like go with what Mir said. Good luck.
He won't starve. Promise.
Mary, mom to 8, 7 of whom are great eaters and the other who picks onions out of everything, but otherwise also is a great eater.
So eventually my sister and her husband gave up. They stopped the shouting, they stopped giving in to the boys. They adopted the attitude that other commenters here have mentioned - "This is the meal I've made. If you're hungry, you'll eat it. I'd never feed you anything harmful or anything I myself would not eat. If you don't want to eat it, that's fine, but you're not getting anything special and you won't be allowed anything to eat until the next meal."
The first few meals this way, the boys started with the usual whining and were told to leave the table. Now my nephews are turning 14 and 9, are both active in sports, and eat anything put in front of them.
Remember Alice, you're the Mommy and are therefore the Boss. Make what you want, Henry's not going to suffer. :)
That said, neither of my girls is an adventurous eater, but we don't argue at the table either.
I feel for ya, really I do, I say quit the extra cooking and see what happens . . .good luck!
I do sometimes encourage her to try new foods, and I always say that she can spit it out if she hates it, and that she can have water ready to take the taste out of her mouth. And if she spits it out with great drama and then glugs back the entire glass of water, I just say 'oh well! now we know!' and move on.
Generally I try to project the attitude that I am glad when she tries new things, and that I am pleased when I can make a variety of different foods for supper, but that it is really not a big deal to me. It hasn't been a miracle cure, but there has been slow steady progress and I know that I feel quite relaxed and good about it.