I have a daughter. A very fun, but very strong-willed daughter. And she hates to eat dinner. OK, she doesn't hate to eat all dinner, just anything that isn't mac 'n cheese, chicken nuggets, plain cheese pizza, or hot dogs. So I try to have about one night a week when I serve something she likes, but the rest of the time, she just LOOKS at what I've prepared and declares that she doesn't like it.
I don't know if I'm just a bad mom, or a bad cook, or what, but each of my children has gone through a stage similar to this.
With my oldest, if he refused to eat at dinnertime, I would put the bowl or plate in the fridge, and he got it for breakfast the next day. Basically, he didn't get to eat ANYTHING until he ate what I'd served him. I figured that eventually he'd get hungry enough to eat it. And he did. At age 10, he is now a human food-eating machine who often eats more than I do, and who almost never needs coaxing in this department.
With my second son, I lost some will power, or else I decided that his shrieking was too hard on my ears, or maybe I decided I hated having little bowls of half-eaten food in my fridge. Whatever the reason, I gave up on trying to serve it the next day. But I was still strong on the point of them not getting to eat anything else that night -- no dessert, no other food or snacks, not even juice. The process took much longer, but then he got obsessed with eating "healthy food," and he realized through experience that having sauce on your noodles does not equate to having a death sentence. He even LIKES most of the food now.
But my now-5-year-old daughter is above any form of bribery or cajoling. She was fine as a baby, eating all the home-made things I served her -- until one day when I gave her baby food from a jar. Ever since that day, she refuses to eat anything new. It is as if I violated her trust that day, and I just haven't been able to earn it back. I have the same rules as with my second son, but she literally DOES not CARE! She would rather go hungry than even TRY the food.
As an example, on Halloween, my in-laws were here and served a San Antonio specialty of chili sauce on corn chips. I told her she wouldn't get to go trick-or-treating if she didn't try ONE bite. One bite. To go trick-or-treating!!! She refused. Several times. I was shocked. She even haughtily declared, "Well, I don't want to go trick-or-treating. I will just let the other kids go, and I will eat their candy when they get back." (The NERVE!) Anyway, she eventually ate the bite, and I even got her to eat the rest of her bowl once I explained that she wouldn't get to EAT the candy unless she ate all of her dinner.
THEN, last Monday we had potato soup. She DOES like MASHED potatoes, so I thought I might be able to persuade her to eat some. NO WAY. Absolutely refused. Without even trying it. I reminded her that she didn't have to eat it, but that she wouldn't get our FHE treat. "I just want to go to bed," she said. But then she kept insisting that she didn't like it. I told her that if she kept saying she didn't like it, she would HAVE to try one bite or go outside. And she kept saying it, so I put her outside and told her she had to stay there until she decided she could try a bite.
It was cold outside, and it was raining. I thought for sure she'd be back inside in under a minute. Nope. It took her about five minutes of crying and saying "I'm cold!" before I finally convinced her to come in and take a bite. But then she wouldn't EAT the bite because it included a potato chunk.
Back outside.
This time I took the bowl to the door and held the spoon there so that she couldn't come inside until the bite was eaten. She was crying and shivering, and I kept telling her that if she would just eat the one bite then she could come inside and get warm. Nope. Nope. and Nope. "Mom, I'm cold. Mom, I'm freezing. Mom, my hair is getting wet." And finally, "Mom, my fingernail polish is coming off."
It was a LONG time before she finally took the one bite and came inside to get warm. I looked at my husband and noted that if she is this unbending NOW, about a bite of soup, when she's hungry and supposedly freezing, then I can't even imagine what she will be like as she gets older. I just wonder if I will have enough energy to match that kind of determination.
Incidentally, though, ...
This past week, she begged me to make potato soup. Yes, begged. Maybe it was worth it???
Oh, and after some cajoling she also ate Tuna Casserole. (I successfully convinced her that the breaded top would taste like a chicken nugget, and that the rest would taste like a tuna sandwich.) She even had seconds -- and thirds -- after originally declaring that she would hate it.
So, DISH... (pun intended.) How do you get your kids to eat? Am I just mean for serving so much "healthy" food? Am I out of luck because they somehow didn't learn it when they were younger? Do I just wait for her to outgrow this one? Am I damaging her delicate self-image by occasionally forcing her to try new things?
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6 comments:
Never doubt that you're doing the right thing by serving healthy food--even if your kids call you mean. I regularly tell my kids I'm going for the "Mean Mommy Award."
It sounds like your daughter is already starting to outgrow her pickiness. Maybe she is just continuing with the drama because she knows it's a surefire way to get attention.
First of all, have you tried dousing her food in ketchup? =)
Secondly, I have to admit that nearly every one of my children are equally as picky except for perhaps the youngest, although she's making headway toward being like the rest of her siblings.
Interestingly, they all started out liking and eating just about everything you pushed at them. As time has passed, however, they've steadily become more picky--even starting not to like or eat some of the things that were their favorites previously.
Around the Stokes house, we try to eat healthy, but I've found that in terms of getting them to eat, we have to often make a couple or even three different things at meal time. A pain I suppose, but at least they eat.
Another thing that sometimes helps is taking their "order" for dinner. That sometimes results in even more work and chaos, but I can usually get them to eat that way as well.
I'm not the model nor all that good of an example though. You can see a prime example of my bad behavior on my FB page under the "after church snacks" photo album.
Found your blog through one of a friend (was it my second cousin Scott Larsen?), and resonated with it because of my own five little people...(input big grin as I remember the wild antics of every day living)...
I have a child who borders on sensory integration imbalance -- really it is more of a struggle with processing new inputs of all kinds -- but even the thought of an unusual taste/texture can sometimes cause repulsion. Sounds like you know what I mean.
At times like those, if my child can involve me in a power struggle about the "fear" of facing new/odd/disgusting things, then he knows that he doesn't have to face the fear -- I will be the big bad guy, and he will be glad to battle me instead of eat the beans and greens, or whatever it is we are having.
The trick for me is to avoid putting myself (my equally headstrong self) into a power struggling match. I will almost always come out demoralized, diminished, and ANGRY!
For us, it works out well if, at a time other than dinner, we can lay down some ground rules with consequences (better yet, if the children help decide the rules and consequences), and then I don't have to be the monster of it all.
I am trying to learn to be patient, not by modifying the rules for the exhaustingly whiny child (nor by allowing them to be so exhausting and whiny), but by ADHERING to the plan and consequences set out with "persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, and love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge..." (D&C 121:41-42)
I have to be patient and long-suffering and gentle and meek in adhering to the law because the law has been created in kindness and pure knowledge.
For example, on a totally different topic, we have the problem of selective hearing in our house, especially when the call comes to brush one's teeth at night. But being patient with the problem shouldn't mean that I have to be ever ready to re-repeat the request all night. So I developed a new system. I know it is hard to listen to mom ... especially when you are in the middle of a game. If I have asked once, and the child hasn't done what is needed, I don't ask again. I just say, "second time." If they hit third time, then they automatically have to clean up a specified number of things in the ever messy play room. No arguments accepted, or the number of things gets bigger.
Maybe some day, after I have trained them to be better listeners (something I should have done a long time ago), I can get it to the point where the consequence falls after the child is asked the second time. We'll see.
So, I have emailed you a ridiculously long comment for something you wrote AGES ago that you have probably already solved...and you don't even know who I am. Ahh-- the oddity of the web!
Incidentally, I heard once that children need to try a new food 10 times before they will eat it without resistance. My son no longer tries to hide his broccoli, has learned to like green beans, and even gobbled up his burrito with the "dreaded black beans" in it last week! Maybe our patience is paying off!
If you are curious, you can catch me on whimsandwhirligigs.blogspot.com/
Best wishes with it all!
--- Sarah.
Sarah, if you are Scott's second cousin, you might be mine too... Are you a Brown?
My mother is a Brown -- Kenneth and Donna's daughter Donella. She and Scott's dad are first cousins. Are you part of Helen and Ron's family?
I actually spent more time going to visit "Aunt Helen" than my own grandparents and have slept many a dreamy (at least from the perspective of an Anne of Green Gables young reader) night in her gabled attic bed with the antique vanity at the foot. I remember my sister and I, when we were 10 and 7, making a tryst that we would bring our fiances there one day...somehow it never happened.
We marveled, as children at the mulberry tree, the luscious fruit, and the freedom to roam we found there with Helen and Ron. She always had a spare corner to find a neat book, an unusual nicknack, or a glorious home-grown treat. Her house and property seemed ENORMOUS to me as a little girl. I was rather surprised to see it as a teen. Smaller space, but not smaller hearts of those dear, dear people!
Scott's wife Amy and I became very close friends before we ever found out we were related. When they went to Boston, both his Dad and I gave them contact for the same relative -- viola! Being related made the friendship even dearer.
Thanks for not minding me perusing your blog. It was fun!
-- Sarah.
P.S. If ever you would like to email me directly and got the mass email sent on 4/24 from Amy about their baby, I'm the Sarah that isn't Scott's sister.
--- Sarah.
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