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Oh, I’ve got your attention now, right?
Maybe there are a few of you whose kids will eat everything. Good for you. In fact, I used to be one of you. When daughter one was little, we would tell her that we were having kale for dessert, and she was thrilled.
Maybe it was the birth of my second, pickier child. Was she born with crazy taste buds? Was the breast milk just too delicious? She instantly emerged as a white food only kind of girl. Somehow, it rubbed off on the big one too. Now my children do not eat vegetables.
Or at least not as many as would ease my parental anxieties.
I get this question a lot. Perhaps I’m giving you the idea over here that I have this one figured out, but I don’t. If I did, I imagine I’d be supporting my family and filling the non-existing college funds on my wise food writing. Wouldn’t you pay money for that?
However, because I think about food nonstop, I do have a bit that I can share. I’m not a big parenting advice giver on principle, but I have a few things that have helped us over here, and if they can help ease the anxieties of some poor parent out there or get a child to eat a broccoli floret, then we are all better off.
So here we go…
1. Eat good food yourself. I know this might be a no-brainer, but I think that it bears repeating. I worked for several years as a homeschooling tutor, and many parents came to me to help their children with Math. Nine times out of ten, they would say to me, in front of their children, "I hate Math. I always have. And I’m no good at it." Once the kids heard their parents say those words, it was very difficult to recover. The same goes for food. If you eat greens with gusto every night for five years, I’d bet you an apple pie that it will make an impression. And it will be good for you, too.
2. Grow vegetables. My kids will eat things that they grew that they will not touch from the store. Daughter two has an intense hatred for carrots, but she will pull up and eat an entire bed of them in twenty minutes if allowed. She doesn’t even get the dirt off first. Even if you don’t have a yard, you can start a little container garden and let your kids graze from it.
3. Let your kids prepare their own food. This one is hard for me (I’m a little, um, controlling in the kitchen), but it really works in my house. The kids will eat anything they make, and they usually want to use as many ingredients as I put in front of them. This is the sure fire way to get the girls to eat salad in my house, even if there might be some odd things in it.
4. Take your kids to the Farmers Market. Let them pick out the vegetables. Maybe you’ll get to try something new yourself, and give them credit when you cook it.
5. Sneak in the vegetables. There are many cookbooks devoted to this topic, and I know many parents who swear by this. I once had a pretty good sweet potato cinnamon bun, so there you go.
6. Bribe with Dessert. Controversial, yes. But effective. I save this one for moments when my "my children are going to get rickets" anxiety is at its peak.
7. Don’t make something else for dinner for your kids. They will eventually get hungry enough to eat what you’ve made. If you feel like you are starving your children with this method, send them to the fruit bowl to help themselves.
8. You know those twenty minutes before dinner is ready? When your kids are SO HUNGRY MOM, and you keep saying, "5 minutes. Did you put the napkins on the table?" and they say "I can’t, I’m SO HUNGRY MOM." Well, put the veggies on the table then, and let them go to town. I often find that I’m unnecessarily holding to the thought that this will spoil their appetite. I think "spoiling the appetite" is ridiculous if you’re talking about good food. If they want to eat three pounds of green beans before dinner because they are SO HUNGRY, that’s okay with me. You can put the veggies that you made for dinner out early, or you can just throw them a bowl of carrot sticks. You will be amazed.
9. This is the most important. Should I say that again? THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT.
Relax. RELAX. I’m going to venture into my general thoughts on parenting here… forgive me- like I said, I try to make a habit of not giving advice. But this is what we work on over here.
Your children will be okay. No child died from lack of vegetables, at least not recently. In my experience, the most effective tactic is to put no pressure on the situation, and to keep your wits about you. I’m pretty sure that daughter two went nearly a year without a green vegetable, and a few months ago, we were over at my Mother’s house, and she helped herself to an entire plate of kale. There was hardly any left for anyone else, but we let her go for it, quietly. We said nothing. We went about our dinner as she cleaned her plate. My husband couldn’t stop kicking me under the table, but hopefully she didn’t notice.
The more I relax, the less anxiety I send their way, the better those girls seem to do. They have pretty strong internal compasses, and I have to trust that they will take what they need, even if it is a year’s worth of noodles. They will be okay.
I think that’s all I’ve got for now. But I’m sure that you all have ideas that will get kids inhaling spinach. Do tell, do tell…
6 Comments
From personal experience I can say that taste buds change over time; hated broccoli and brussel sprouts and cauliflower and now I actually like them.
Here is a link for the spinach.
I was a classic picky eater. The folks pretty much would ask “Have you ever eaten it before? Then how do you know you don’t like it?”
However, if it made me sick to my stomach, then I was usually given a pass on that food going forward. And that did happen a few times. The only exception for a long time was that I had to eat liver and onions no matter if it made me sick. That went until my sister-in-law joined the family at which point, they relented and made ‘burgers for us while the rest had their liver.
I have found that though I dislike cooked spinach, I do like raw spinach as a salad. And I prefer raw broccoli to cooked as well.
Funny, I just had a conversation yesterday about the differences in my kids’ eating habits. The first one loves almost everything, especially fruits and veggies; when she first started finger foods, her favorite was steamed broccoli. The second one is exactly what I would describe as a “white foods only” person, would live on carb-heavy junk food if I let him.
Have always wondered, though, if they were that way from the moment they were conceived. You see, I craved fruits and grilled meats during my first pregnancy; I craved Ben and Jerry’s Brownie Nut Fudge ice cream and Cheetohs during the second pregnancy. It was as if they were already telling me what they wanted before they came out.
As the younger one gets older, he’s slowly learned to appreciate a wider range of foods. Social pressure from peers has helped, surprisingly, in concert with away-from-home occasions. Apparently his friends badgered him in to trying new foods while he was away at camp a few years ago, and we’re still discovering how much that single away-from-home event has shaped his more mature eating habits.
One thing we can rely on to get over the strange-foods hump to persuade him to try them: desserts. As in, carrot cake, chocolate zucchini bread, pumpkin pie. The kid will eat an entire squash all by himself if you let him make and eat an Impossible Pumpkin Pie made with home-grown and baked butternut squash (do cut back on the sugar; we also swap some of the white sugar with brown sugar for richer flavor).
An entire package of dehydrated veggie soup makes no impression at all on the basic look of a meatloaf – and the kids survived, indeed.
The same little kids that didn’t eat veggies without trickery now moralize about their excellent eating habits, and I keep my mouth shut about what I did to get those veggies into them some few decades back.
Monster Guts Soup.
Mommy chopped up a monster she found and cooked everything that was in his tummy. Now tell me what the monster ate…
Yeah, he ate a lot of veggies.
Veggies are overrated… I love string beans with a dash of salt and some butta. I rather have bean salad or pasta salad than leafy green salad. I like Lima Beans; Southern Style…
Outside of that, I don’t like all this crazy Summer Squash, Eggplant nonsense. Like Ketchup, Tomato Soup, Tomato Paste (In Pizza) and Tomato Sauce (in most Mexican and Italian Food) but hate raw tomatoes.
How I’ll make kids eat it when I won’t I don’t know I’ll let you know, maybe by 2015.