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 3-year-old has attempted the food issue thing a couple of times, and my solution has been the following: If she doesn't like what we're eating, she doesn't have to eat it. But she doesn't get anything else other than what we're all having, and no snacks or anything else. If she screams, she gets to sit in her room to scream it out. We just turn up the TV until her voice runs out. She is THAT stubborn -- she screamed her head off for 45 minutes the first time. Now it's 5 minutes every once in a while, and then she asks to come back down. (She's not locked in or anything -- she just has to stay in her room with the door pushed-to, but not closed, for safety.) But those first couple times were total torture. I stood just out of sight biting my knuckles and trying not to cry or give in.
Anyway, so what it comes down to for what worked for US is, she doesn't have to eat what's there, but she doesn't get other choices, either. That worked for us, but everybody and every kid is different. Good luck! I hope you find a solution that works for you.
Also, like someone else has mentioned, if letting him be involved in preparing food or selecting fruits & vegetables at the store is something that wouldn't ruin your day, he might be more inclined to sample the results...especially if you never once suggest that he might want to - something like "I feel like having a cantaloupe for breakfast tomorrow. Can you help me find one that smells good and isn't too hard?"
I did like canned green beans, steak and hamburger. When I was a little older I added lobster to that list since we went to Cape Cod every year. Notice I had (and still have) expensive tastes!
If it makes you feel any better, I now like ANYTHING. I'll even eat kidneys. I eat all vegetables, even okra. I eat snails. I eat sushi. You can take me to any type of restaurant and not only will I find something on the menu I'll eat, but I'll love it. I only draw the line at monkey brains (apparently a delicacy in some oriental countries, luckily unavailable in the U.S.) and lima beans (it's the texture in that case). So there is hope.
However, as time has worn on, I have slowly learned to like other foods, and now there's nothing I won't injest, including steak tartare, raw spinach, Indian food, sushi, Jameson shots....
Irrelevant aside: I grew up eating EVERYTHING and loving it, and I just assumed my kids would too. Once again parenthood slaps me upside the head!
"No one ever starved to death with a plate of food in front of them."
(Yes, yes, anorectics excepted...)
But there could also be a different issue with the food. He might have food allergies or sensory issues that make the feel of foods unpleasant in his mouth.
Just throwin those 2c out there for you to consider. Good luck.
I was also raised by parents who never, and I mean NEVER allowed the following products: White bread, mac and cheese in a box, um, cold cereal, any thing with a cartoon on it, white rice, um, anything fun, anything sweet, artificial flavors, um...
And now I'm grown up and a wierd-food eating health nut. I will try anything, and I like almost everything. I got here kicking and screaming, but learned the system and now I can pass it along to you.
It's tricky. But I do know. The kicker, the real, real evil trick is this: you introduce some nasty shit into the mix so that the rest of it looks good.
My health-nut parents used canned spinach and canned kale for this devious purpose. Once a week, add a disgusting splotch of that crap to his plate and tell him he has to eat a bite it before he leaves the table. Polish yours off, you're a grown-up so you can do it.
To this day, talk of having to eat that canned kale (shudder) is a bonding experience between my siblings and me. But trust us, it teaches you what "tastes bad" means. You learn that you can get one bite of anything down. You get a nice, one-bite sized portion of iron (yay!) a week. And squash soup is awesome by comparison.
My kids, too. Number One son is, always has been, picky, loves the junk, even though we never had much of it around. We had a fight the other day when I tried to make him eat a salad along with the delicious dinner I had prepared. He is 20.
Number Two son is the poster child for healthy eating. He asks for extra servings of broccoli, and has been known to eat 2 pints of blueberries or a dozen peaches at one sitting. He is also 4" taller than his older brother, for what that's worth.
I am not much one (or at all) for cutesy signs, but one that hangs in my kitchen reads:
Choices for Dinner:
Take it
Leave it.
It took me way too long to figure out what my participation in all these fights with the older one boiled down to, besides, of course, trying to feed my children healthily.
Me: Food=Love
Him: Reject my food, reject me
He figured out early that that was a button he could push, and push it he did. Now I just make sure he takes a multi-vitamin daily, and make good meals like bean soup where they get healthy stuff that still tastes good.
And cheese sauce. Cheese sauce makes even picky eaters like broccoli and cauliflower.
I guess my point is that I have no real advice for you, but I definitely understand what you're going through. I feel your pain, believe me.
So that's me writing as a former kid. As a mom, though, you've got all my sympathy. I don't think we ever fully get over the shock and horror that we experience when we realize that we have to actually sustain the lives of these tiny helpless creatures with random food that we make or find. Scary.
Kids do have more— and more sensitive— tastebuds than adults, so I try to simplify their food. Instead of cooking an entirely different meal, I tend to just adjust the one I'm already making. It's easy to take different ingredients out of a dish as you go along, and it's no extra work. So instead of salad, I'll serve them elements of a salad: cubes of cucumber of carrot or zucchini, with dressing to dip if requested. If there's a casserole, a pasta, a stir-fry, same thing: just the elements.
This way, there's a greater chance of Henry actually liking something new on his plate in all its unadorned glory... and perhaps a better chance of him trying it willingly the next time it's served. And of course, if he won't eat, the same procedure follows as everyone else suggests. No alternate meal, no snacks.
This way you can show Henry you're trying to meet him halfway, but it's time for him to start broadening his horizons. And make it clear it's just a stepping stone. Sooner or later you'll expect him to eat what you and Steve eat.
He will be 14 next month and is over 6 feet tall, an exceptional athlete and eats a 16 ounce porterhouse and twenty minutes later asks for a snack.
I, however, would rather drink my own blood than eat another scrambled egg.
Once he was old enough to understand the consequences for his actions, we went the route of, "Eat what you're served, or we'll save it and re-heat for breakfast, then lunch, then dinner" etc.
He refused to eat for the first two days, then I made a fresh batch of the item he was refusing to eat, which, BTW, was spaghetti.
It took a few weeks, but then it clicked. Now, he gets to choose how much he wants and what veggies he'll eat, when I'm cooking, but we make him eat something very healthy every night.