Sounds like the gun wasn’t scary enough.
Fair enough. But if I’m going to have a beer or two on a weekend, I can stop at two and know that’s it for the week, and I understand how having more could be detrimental to me.
Kids don’t have that level of reasoning. My kid would eat French fries 3 meals a day until she pukes. They also don’t know that decades of research and millions of dollars have been put in to making junk food as addictive and appealing as possible. That’s more where I was going with the cigarette reference. It is just rewarding them with a really bad, addictive behaviour they don’t remotely understand.
For years we had to either take with or buy a jar of peanut butter on any vacation. My son wouldn’t each much else. Vegetables well we had carrots but not much else. Today he is a software engineer in California. Doesn’t eat a lot of veggies but does eat brocolli Keep trying but don’t let it get you too upset. Apparently it can take 20 tries with many kids to get them to eat one new food. What I don’t get is why if it is orange they almost always eat it. Give them a cheeto and every time they will eat it. Goldfish same thing. Most kids will eat carrots.
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Yeah, I can see that point of view. Seems like 1x meal per week for some good ol’ fashioned dietary indulgence isn’t that bad, but like anything, it can snowball.
Not trying to harp on you or your parenting choices at all with the following question. But out of curiosity, if it were solely up to you (without spousal input) would she ever get french fries then? If the viewpoint is fries are bad for you so you should probably avoid them in day to day life; and you understandably don’t want to create a reward loop around them as a consequence for good behavior - would she ever get some bites of that salty, fried goodness? Or not til she’s some age where she can better understand the diabolical manipulations of Big Fry?
Seriously. In my 20s I think I could not remember much from before 5 years old. Only snippets from Kindergarten.
Really?
My parents moved us out of the house I was born in a few months before I turned 3. I have a few very vivid memories I know are real.
I fell down the steps, hurt my ankle. I remember my Dad putting me in my high chair while my Mom filled a pot with cold water, moved from sink and then put my ankle in it.
I also remember rocking my baby brother in his crib with Sesame Street on TV.
A few other snapshot photos from that house persist. Wonder how far back most people can go??
I don’t remember anything from before kindergarten. Kindergarten-age recollections are few and far between. Age six or so I start to have a more coherent set of memories.
My first memory is making butter in a pre-kindergarten class when I was 4. It was delicious!
My mom was pretty good about making us kids a healthy dinner, and I generally tried to finish it. But I certainly would have preferred junk if it was in the house. My brother was even pickier.
I ate more readily when I was allowed to help cook, but I wasn’t involved with shopping, which would have been better.
My best friend’s dad was a professional chef. He knew I liked science, and got into explaining the chemistry behind cooking and baking, and why you did certain things. That really sparked my interest and probably helped to this day. He also taught how to make the food visually appealing. And if you prepare a colorful meal, it tends to be healthier.
It’s hard but if you get a kid to feel “I can make something better than this prepackaged stuff”, then you’re on your way. Even if that includes letting them make a real dessert now and then.
my 5yo is -pretty- picky but not as bad as other posters in this thread and nowhere near ARFID.
but she LOVES helping me cook, LOVES helping in the supermarket, and all of that really warms my heart.
but then we’ll get to dinnertime and she won’t eat the food that she helped me shop for, helped me cook, tasted along the way, etc.
it’s mostly texture for her, and she’s also in a phase of not liking food mixed together. she’s at least starting to communicate -what- it is about whatever food that she doesn’t like, and she’s also becoming more willing to at least taste it. it just cooks my nugget when she won’t even taste something.
what got us through our darkest phases with her picky eating was making her a menu (included whatever we were eating for dinner, plus some things I knew she would eat) and let her pick, making it clear that we didn’t care at all how much she did or didn’t eat. so I think that control aspect frequently has a lot to do with it.
2yo eats everything in sight, mixed together, whatever, but is starting to learn from 5yo…
both my kids do a cooking class at school
my eldest, when she was a baby - pre-walking and still in diapers, we’d take her to cafe Paul and they serve bread with olive tapeade. She ate it like it was crack. olive tapenade is quite a unusal taste for infants I think, but ten years on, she will still eat a jar of olives.
I am not sure food is something to be super judgemental over, I think if there are healthy things a kid will eat it should be positively encouraged not punitively punished for failing to eat.
Serve them the healthy things they will eat - even if limited in number
I don’t at all understand how you can keep chips, cookies, crap in the house and then be surprised when they get up in the middle of the night and just eat it.
on another note - she is also just as made for greek yoghurt and honey
My 10 year old grandson only likes proteins (beef, pork, chicken) and strawberries. Since birth he has never liked vegetables. He likes french fries, bread and also cheese. He does not like casseroles either. That is just his preference and he eats a good volume and is extremely active (competitive soccer, swimming and running).
He will eat ice cream, but only chocolate.
He does not like pasta.
At school, he will choose to not eat if they do not have what he likes. But his mom is good about reviewing the menu weekly and making him a lunch on those days.
I do not see an issue. When he is hungry, we feed him. NBD. He is a natural carnivore.
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No worries at all - I’m happy to have someone poke holes in my line of thinking here. Parenting is such an emotional topic, it’s easy to dig your heels in and sometimes you feel like you’re just aimlessly wandering a dark room trying to grasp the correct answer. I’m happy to hear alternative points of view on this.
To answer your question, “it depends”. I have nothing against treating my kid to fries now and then. Hell, one of my favourite things to do is surprise her with a trip to our favourite local burger joint for some dad/daughter time. But, I’m pretty hyper sensitive to her patterns and when dinners start routinely becoming a battle or more closely resemble a tense negotiation about how much of what she needs to eat rather than a family dinner, I start to think maybe we need to reel in the treats a bit. If most of what she is eating is healthy and she is interested in a variety of foods, I have no problem with treats. We aren’t currently in that place.
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wonder if you know how much hydrogenated oils/monoglycerides you are consuming in your PB/tortillas if you are thinking you are eating “ok” nutritional options.
anyways as other people stated, teach your kid how to make things! chicken nuggets can easily be done by having already cooked chicken pieces, adding bread crumbs, and coating with egg to reheat. salt and spices make the difference. you make it to how you want it to taste! At least it wont have the garbage ingredients in premade freezer packaged foods
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Interesting, I’ll give that book a read. Based on the description I totally agree that flavour manipulation has a huge part to play.
I mentioned earlier my daughter will happily pick tomatoes off our plant and eat them whole. No way would she go to the fridge and seek out a store bought tomato to do the same. The difference is astounding.
Likewise, when I was 15 I got a job at McDonald’s so I could save money to fly with my mom to her hometown in rural Poland. So, I worked for a year, ate a ton of McDonald’s during that time, then went on this month long trip. I vividly remember my first meal in Poland. My aunt served me a breaded cutlet of some kind and it was like eating crack. I couldn’t believe how delicious it was. But I didn’t know what kind of meat it was. I had to ask my mom. It was just chicken. I was so used to eating grocery store chicken in North America or worse, McDonald’s, I didn’t even know what real, farm raised chicken, that was fed real food all their lives, tasted like. I’m 41 now, and I still vividly remember the food on that trip when I had just turned 16. That trip completely changed my perspective about what good food was.
Great suggestion. And do it all in an air-fryer to make it even better.
I believe there’s a section in the book that speaks to that exact thing: factory farm chicken vs backyard chicken
You’re both kinda right. At some point there’s a hierarchy of things to consider when looking at nutrition. Most adults are concerned primarily with calories and macronutrient ratios of protein/fat/carbs. From that perspective, PBJ isn’t that bad at all if you’re careful with the nut butter.
If you dive deeper in to the nutrition you’re spot on about hydrogenated oils etc.
The reality is despite us all being wealthy successful triathletes (pink) we don’t all have the time or resources to source totally organic non processed free everything etc and our scrutiny of nutrients only goes so deep.
I get what you’re saying about PBJ not being ideal- but when the current alternative is eating Nutella with a spoon, I’m still giving it the win.
Picky eaters are hard. There are a lot of issues wrapped up in one.
Just like a couch potato probably shouldn’t run a marathon without slowly building endurance- changing kids diets is a lot of small steps.
Heck, my teenager is just starting to not pick every mushroom out of what I cook and may have just eaten a shrimp or two without gagging. But she’s always been pretty easy other than a few things. I’ve never fought it - I like mushrooms - I’m cooking with them. If she eats everything else on her plate but picks out the mushrooms no big deal. I don’t eat oatmeal unless there is no alternative and I may gag a little eating it.
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