A New Thought On The Picky Eater Challenge

A New Thought On The Picky Eater Challenge

Stop. Let them be. Yes, you heard me right; leave the child alone. I have three children, and out of my three children, two are extremely picky eaters. I have never made my kids eat what I cooked for dinner. My thoughts on this are that sometimes I need to be in the mood to eat a certain food and if I have to be in the mood to eat, say tacos, then what’s to say that kids don’t have to be in the mood for a particular food as well?

Have you ever had this conversation with a friend or spouse, “Hey, where do you wanna eat tonight?”

“Oh, I don’t care.”

“What are you in the mood for?”

“I dunno. What are you in the mood for?”

“Italian?”

“Nah.”

“Chinese?”

You get the picture.

You plop down a bowl of spaghetti in front of your child and he sticks his nose up. What kid doesn’t like spaghetti? My kid doesn’t like spaghetti. What do you do? Do you force him to eat or do you allow him the choice of eating that or something else? In my home, the kids get 2 choices. They can either eat what I made or they can get themselves something else. Nine times out of ten, they will get themselves a bowl of cereal.

I am a really good cook, I hate doing it, but I am good at it. So, this doesn’t tell of my cooking skills, however, this does tell of how our children also have different tastes than we do. It’s simple really if you think about it. Babies eat baby food. Why? Because their taste buds (and teeth) haven’t formed yet and their needs are different than adult’s needs. When the babies reach toddler age, we still feed them in a different way, but we continue to expand their palates. Then, all of a sudden we stop feeding them in different ways and make them eat what we eat and when we eat. Does that make sense? It doesn’t to me.

I cringe when I hear of children being bribed to eat something that they don’t want. I also feel the same way when I hear of children being forced to clean their plates. The child has been given a huge portion and has eaten most of her meal. But, to get her dessert, she must clean her plate. Studies have shown that this habit leads to adult obesity because the child sized brain can not say, “Hey, I’m full!” And, now the adult sized brain doesn’t recognize when its belly is full.

In my experience of being a mother for 25 years, as long as you continue to offer your children different foods to at least try, then that’s all you can do. I choose to pick my battles, and I refuse to battle over food.