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)
My folks made hearty, wholesome dinners, and when I threw a fit because I didn't care for the dish of the night, or didn't want to try it, they were just fine with that.
And it took me nearly no time to figure out that I'd rather try new things and shut up politely about the food that others have prepared for me at the dinner table than to go hungry.
It's just good manners.
Currently, my kid eats all sorts of stuff, including curries and such, but I dread the Stubborn Era, where it's not really about the Food, but rather about the Power. I tell ya, it will break his Indian father's heart the day my boy turns his back on a curry.
Sometimes, reading your blog is like viewing the coming attractions to a horror flick. ;-)
Don't let it be hot dogs.
My friend ate a pretty much only-hot-dog diet for years as a kid. By the time he was 10, he had abdominal cancer.
He went through chemo and has been in remission ever since, but he and his wife will never conceive their own children because of it. He has trouble getting health insurnce, etc etc.-- lots of life complications for a cancer survivor.
So limit the hot dogs, everybody. Maybe his diet was related, maybe not-- but I'd rather err on the cautious side. My daughter has no idea that they exist. :)
After WWIII at the table one night, we quit cold turkey, although sometimes I'd keep out some boiled chicken for him from a casserole I was making. Now he's 7 and he eats what we eat. He doesn't always like it, but at least he eats what we serve him.
His two sisters? Ate our same dinner from 6 months on (mushed-up). We've always put some of everything on their plate and they ate what they wanted. Food has never been an issue and they eat everything - salad, brussels sprouts, shrimp.
Henry is very bright and knows exactly how to play you. Remove the response he anticipates and voila! you're back in control! Eventually he'll figure out that he's missing out on stuff. For cripes' sake, at one point our son wouldn't eat chocolate ice cream and now he'd bathe in in it if we let him. Good luck!
It was a battle long after I started wearing a bra. When I moved out at 18, I was so grateful, so happy to be gleefully going off to college to subsist on nothing but poptarts and orange juice.
And I pretty much did just that until last March. But now! Now I eat all kinds of wonderful and healthy things.
What more do you WANT, woman?
My middle child is all beige, all carbs, all the time. Not only is his repatoire not expanding, it is shrinking. He is five years old and has yet to suffer a single bite of a whole fruit. I would give him fifty dollars to eat a blueberry.
As I have two other children (one carnivore, one omnivore) I can assure you it is nature, not nurture.
Great post.
But I'm not a parent.
I wasn't a picky eater but apparently, I went through phase around three or four where I was a pain at the dinner table. Whining and crying and generally driving my parents crazy. One night, they just got up. They told me "we don't want to eat with you if you are going to act like that" and that I had to stay at the table (and therefore wasn't allowed to go play) and finished their dinner in another room in peace. Apparently, that was it. I got the hint. They never really had problems with me at dinner again. I had been isolated in the last place I wanted to be, and for a kid who was as social as I was (and still am) that was horrible.
But the biggest point is not to give in. Follow through. Do what you say you will do. Don't say "you have to eat this food" but then break down and give him something else an hour later. He won't have the power and he will give up eventually...
I can't wait to hear what happens after this post...Good luck!
Once we went on a road trip and each day he cut out one of his 10 foods. By the end of the trip he was just drinking milk and, as he was still wearing diapers then, I can bear witness to the fact that his poop was white--like ricotta, come to think of it!
It'll be okay. I promise.
My mom says that when she has talked about making veggies for dinner--spinach or asparagus, for instance--and talked about making a lot of them, because we all ate so much of them, her friends would ask incredulously how she had three kids that ate (and loved) spinach. I guess the answer is that we were forced to eat these things again and again, and in time, came to appreciate them. I'm even beginning to admit that broccoli might not be so bad, though I don't think my sister has budged on cauliflower yet.
I don't know if it was mean or not, my parents making us eat some of everything on the table, but it sure worked. And I'm grateful, now, that my parents stuck to their guns, because I'm a big fan of trying new things, and pretty much a confirmed foodie.
You can either go on like this, or you can stop it and tell him that what you make for dinner is the end of the discussion. It will probably take him a little while to figure it out, but he will either eventually give in to trying new foods, or he won't. Either way, he will not starve to death.
In addition, and I am sure you know this, there are other ways for him to get fiber in his diet. Maybe he doesn't like muffins right now, but you could make a batch of zucchini muffins with a low sugar content and have them conveniently around the house. Perhaps...?
My parents, both doctors, gave me whatever they were eating. If I didn't want to eat it, I did not eat that evening; my mother was very clear that she didn't want to cater to a small child or let me run her life. I'm thankful for this, actually, because I will eat basically anything at this point. Compare and contrast that with my husband, whose parents coddled his food issues, and who continues to be an obnoxiously picky eater.
Maybe someday she'll eat, please...someday?
(That's a total lie. I don't even have a child. Just a compulsion to tell people what they want to hear.)
YOU ARE DOING EXACTLY THE RIGHT THING.
I swear you can trust him and his body and that is the most important thing you can teach him about food and his body.
You are just so right on by accepting him as he is in every way. If I could change anything in the world I would wish for that very thing to be true for us all. What a gift for Henry.
I do have a 12 year old niece who eats only the following: grilled cheese, cheese pizza, broccoli with cheese, and chicken nuggets. For 8 years my brother tried to get her to try things, and she finally gave in and tried popcorn. She'd sworn that she HATED popcorn. (Who doesn't like popcorn?) And of course, she liked it.
She insists she hates everything, but she's never tried anything. It drives me nuts, and I don't even eat with her more than 5 times a year.