I read a piece in the NYT this week from Frank Bruni about how anxious parents today are to avoid saying anything to their kids that could lead to an eating disorder…or obesity. I recently blogged about my own struggle with what to say (and what not to say) with my own kids with regard to food.
I try not to have too many hard and fast rules about food, but we do have a couple at our house. One rule is that while you don’t have to eat anything you don’t like at a particular meal (I don’t even make them “try just one bite” like a lot pf parents do), you are absolutely forbidden from complaining about the food, or criticizing it. That’s a real button-pusher for me, when children complain about the food they have been served. I also do not ever, under any circumstances, prepare separate or special meals for one child or another who doesn’t like what everyone else is eating. I hate kitchen duty too much for that; it’s painful enough for me to prepare even one meal.
Over the past five years, my children have become pickier eaters than they used to be, but I think they still eat a wider variety of foods than a lot of kids who come to our house and seem repulsed by things like salad. E has developed a pathological aversion to cheese, which is unfortunate, since I love cheese and it ends up in many of our meals. The upshot of them getting pickier is that we have had many family suppers in the past year or two where at least one child declines to actually eat the food on the table. He or she will sit at the table politely, but without eating. Which leads to rule #3; you don’t have to eat a single bite of your supper, but don’t then expect to have any snacks later, before bedtime.
What are the food rules at your house?
17 Responses to “Never say diet (to your kids)”
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I have roughly the same rules – and I also don’t really love kitchen work (although I love to eat!). My kids (9, 7 and 4) are very different in their eating habits but 1) They all eat tons of fruit per day; 2) They all like a wide variety of vegetables; 3) They all are very active children. Enjoying my long-laboured chicken curry or my efforts at a seafood rice will surely come (I hope!)
Marta from Lisbon
Only One kid, so it was easier to be accommodating.
If I was cooking something I knew she detested I served her something else.
Now she eats food i would not eat, vegan crap!
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Rules for the kids:
1) There are 3 acceptable comments about food you are served. “This is great!” Or “Thank you.” Or nothing.
2) You can always eat something healthy after dinner. Carrots, apples, cheese, etc. I don’t get the “no snacks if you didn’t eat dinner” rule. My goals are to have them eat healthy food, and to learn how to be polite at the dinner table. What they eat after dinner, on their own, is their business as long as it’s healthy.
3) If you’re at someone else’s house, you NEVER ask for something that hasn’t been offered. The only exception I can think of is water, since it’s reasonable to expect that just about anyone can produce a glass of water.
Rules for me:
1) Don’t produce a meal if you know a kid won’t eat any of it. Children are members of the family. I wouldn’t fix a meal the kids wouldn’t eat any more than I would cook a meal I wouldn’t eat, or my husband wouldn’t eat (unless it was also clean-out-the-refrigerator night, where the kids could eat leftovers). Which leads to …
2) Don’t produce meals that consist of only one dish, and make sure you have something (rice? baked potatoes? green beans? corn?) that everybody will eat.
I used to think my now-13-year-old daughter was a picky eater. Then, one day, I was discussing this to my mother and sister, who had both commented about what a GOOD eater she was when she visted them. So they asked what she wouldn’t eat. I mentioned fish stew. And lentil soup. And spinach quiche … My sister said, “Ugh. I’m with her. Why would you expect a child to eat any of THAT?” Eventually, I realized my daughter wasn’t really all that picky. She just liked plain food – the kind my mother and sister always served.
All my kids know that they are expected to eat a vegetable at every dinner, but as soon as they master the art of politely asking for an alternate, they can have either some leftover veg or some of the frozen stuff I keep on hand. So far, each of my kids has just one or two vegetables that are consistently declined. I never offer an alternate for the main course because that’s just a logistical nightmare, but I do take into account what everyone likes and dislikes. And yes, they can choose not to eat at all, but they have to sit with us and stay out of the food after dinner. I’m saved from seafood, which many kids are picky about, because my husband is allergic to nearly all seafood.
My parents had strict rules about never complaining about what was served, especially at relatives homes. Once when I was seven, at a family dinner, my aunt went into my grandma’s kitchen to make mac&cheese for my cousins, while the rest of us were getting ready to eat what my grandma had prepared, and I remember mortifying my parents by saying too loudly “She’s making another dinner for them? What’s wrong with them?” I didn’t mean it badly, I just assumed my cousins must be sick or have food allergies if they were getting a special meal.
Rules: They have to be polite and they have to at least try it. I don’t mind respectful comments on my cooking. I sometimes make a new meal that just bombs. I can handle them telling me why they don’t like it. They are usually very constructive in their comments. It really helps me understand when they say something like, “I don’t like it when spaghetti sauce has big pieces of tomato in it, it’s too tangy” for example. I have my own favorite kind of spaghetti sauce too y’know? Why should it only be my kind of sauce that is served? It gives me ideas on how to modify the meal so that everybody can enjoy it. Just don’t yell, “Eww, this is gross!”. I let them make their own sandwhich if they don’t like what I’ve cooked (this doesn’t really apply to meals that I cook and I know they like). I don’t think they should be punished for not liking something.
We also do not prepare something different if one of my kids doesn’t like what’s being served. They may get something healthy for themselves, but I am not a short-order cook. We do expect them to take at least one bite of a new dish before dissing it…and usually they end up eating much or all of it, claiming that “it’s ok”. They may have a small treat (a cookie or a small dish of ice cream, sometimes a piece of candy, like right after Halloween) after dinner if they eat everything they were served, but only if they eat EVERYTHING. There have been occasions when they haven’t really liked what I’ve prepared and they’ll straight up say, “I just won’t have a treat tonight,” and get up from the table. My oldest has always been an excellent and rather adventurous eater, which was wonderful. My youngest…not so much. He’s gotten better over the last year or so, but prior to that he consumed a steady diet of yogurt, oatmeal, fresh fruit and plain pasta. To say it was a challenge to get him to try anything different is an understatement. I’m so glad he’s turned the corner!
True food story from today: Four year old objected to left over pork chop, said she HATED pork chops (even though two days ago she ate every bite). What she wanted was the fried apples that went with it, all of which were gone. Hysterical screaming demands for apples ensued. Finally she noticed that we had actual apples and asked for one of those. I said, “After you eat some of your pork chop,” which was by now sitting at the table waiting for her. She said, “Go ahead and MAKE ME eat it!” I said, “Okay,” picked her up, plopped her down at the table, stuck a piece of pork chop in her mouth and told her to chew. Then I went into the kitchen to get the apple. I returned to find her happily chewing. Face was saved and now she could enjoy the chop!
I have one exceptionally picky eater and so I do have to cater to him a little bit. But mostly I try to serve a variety of things–when I cook at all!–and if someone doesn’t like it they can cook something else.
One more rule for me: Stop while you’re ahead. A recent conversation at the dinner table, after I had made creamed spinach with mushrooms:
Joseph: Mom, this is WAY better than usual!
Clisby: Thanks, honey, I’m glad you like it.
Joseph: Weeellll …. I didn’t exactly like it. But it’s not nearly as bad as usual.
There’s only so much tact in a 7-year-old.
This conversation makes me think of a story my husband OFTEN references. He hates lima beans. Hates them. Honestly, I can’t blame him and can’t think of many people that DO like them. But his mother fixed them most of his childhood and strictly enforced that he eat them, even though he detested them.
His major complaints about this?
1) She absolutely NEVER fixes them anymore! “It’s like she was only fixing them to force us to eat them!”
and
2) SHE hates tomatoes and absolutely never served them! “Why are lima beans more important that TOMATOES!”
I know my kids LOVE potatoes so it’s not really a rule but if I am serving something that they absolutely love and will ignore all other food for I serve the veggies first, then the meat, then the starch that they love. I love Clisby’s rules, I will have to squeeze those into mine.
I love, love, love to cook! I have one extremely picky daughter and one who will eat anything except beans, lol! I also understand that the childhood brain may like something one day and not the next. I cook what I want, plan for it to be healthy and tasty. If they don’t “like” it, or just not in the mood for it they are welcome to make a pb&j sandwich. I always try to remember that I was once also a picky child;I try to treat them like people who have the same preferences and dislikes as anyone else.
Miriam: I agree. If my husband cooks something I don’t like all that much, I don’t complain about it – but I might eat only a little bit and fix something else later. It’s the same if I cook – he might supplement the meal with something he likes better. I don’t care. And I don’t see any reason to treat my children with less consideration. I keep plenty of healthy items on hand, and if they want to eat 3 spoonfuls of spinach tofu delight, and then eat a bagel with cream cheese later, that’s just not my problem.
Clisby, lol spinach tofu delight! My youngest daughter LOVES alfalfa sprouts will choose them over potato chips any day. It totally grosses out her 14 year old friends lol!
My husband and I don’t even like to eat the same thing most of the time. I have a really picky preschooler so I just keep brown rice and bread and peanut butter and yogurt for now. I’m really going to struggle with this one part of family life because I don’t enjoy cooking much.
Katie – if your kids are picky, why not have them make meals sometimes? J is plenty old enough to cook a meal, and E. is plenty old enough to help her. That way, they can cater to their own food preferences and you get a break from making dinner.
My daughter is only 17 months right now, but in the future I plan to implement some common sense I read on Salon’s Table Talk years ago: You must take a courtesy bite of everything, and then if you don’t want anything more of what has been prepared, you can help yourself to something that doesn’t require cooking (yogurt, fruit, a sandwich, cereal).
I think that really covers it, aside from what others have said about being sure that commentary about one’s cooking is polite and respectful.
I love the Trust Model of eating espoused by Ellyn Satter. http://www.ellynsatter.com/ It’s sort of along the lines of what people have described above, but also involves things like demystifying dessert and snacks by serving a scoop of ice cream or pudding or whatever at the table with the savoury ‘main’ meal. It has worked really well for my three year old girl. I used to follow your Rule 3, that is no dessert/snacks/etc unless some dinner is eaten. I never knew just how stubborn a toddler could get! Rule 3 obviously wasn’t working for us and I had no desire to make dinner a war of wills. I looked up stuff on Google and found a blog called Family Feeding Dynamics, which is about using Satter’s techniques on the authors’ own children.
So, I put out a dish of jello or ice cream with all the other food. We also follow Satter’s advice to try to serve the food buffet-style, and let her serve herself from the bowls of peas, carrots, meat, and so on. (The mess is worth it.) And every few days introduce a new food without fanfare, it’s just there on the table. If she asks, we just say “It’s asparagus” or “That’s baby corn”. At first she continued her refusal and just ate the dessert portion, but us really not making a fuss about how dessert and snack food was “special” and she couldn’t have any unless she ate vegetables soon lessened her interest in making it a sore point. We also don’t make comments like “What a good girl you are for eating the broccoli.” Me and my husband talk about the food and ask questions of our daughter kind of like junior restaurant critic! As in “I like how these beans were steamed so they’re still crunchy” and “I think I like carrot sticks dipped in ranch instead of mayonnaise, because I like the dill in the ranch, but mayonnaise is still nice.” Focusing on the texture and taste of the food and encouraging her to explore her palate. We don’t ask her to have the one compulsory bite of everything either, just keep re-introducing the disliked food every so often, without fuss. Most of the time after a few weeks she forgets she’s even wrinkled her nose at it and tries it. We also don’t talk about things like “Don’t eat too many fries, they’re unhealthy” and are encouraging family friends and relatives to not say things like this too, as well as not saying “I ate way too much cake, I’ll have to work it off at the gym now.” This is disengaging the idea of “good” and “bad” foods and setting the stage early for her to have a great relationship with food and hopefully avoid dieting and eating disorders.
And now she is one of the few kids in her pre-school that doesn’t go nuts binging on the candy or chips or cake when it’s available at parties and such, and she doesn’t demand fast food all the time either. She knows we happily have snacks, both of the carrot stick and the fried variety sometimes and might have a fast food meal once every couple of weeks, so there’s nothing special and forbidden about them.
I highly recommend the Ellyn Satter techniques!