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I confess I am completely puzzled by picky eaters.
I had 7 kids. The rule in my house was that (aside from legit allergies) each kid could put up to 3 foods on the "I hate that" list. Other than that, they ate what was served. If the food disgusted them that much, bread, peanut butter and jelly was available as an alternative.
Never had a problem.
My sister raised a daughter who would only eat 15 foods by the time she was 6! She is 26 now and still only eats those 15 foods. As far as I can tell her mother allowed this behavior. Even our parents suggested she send her daughter to me for a summer. She thought my country life and my rough & tumble kids would be too traumatic for the kid. The kid got fat (400+ lbs), dropped out of high school and spends all day online or at the mall on her rascal scooter (she can't walk more than a few steps now). So sad.
Now I see my 3 yr old grandson being coddled as a picky eater and it drives me crazy!
His dad was never allowed to eat that way and I don't understand why he lets his kid do it. I asked him and his reasoning was that it was just easier to cater to a 3 year olds preferences than make a battle of it.
I am just.....befuddled by this.
Picky eater = Lax parenting.
What my Mom did -- a women who worked very, very hard and was a great Mom-- was, not let us up from the table until we ate. There was no "picky" or us telling her what we wanted or didn't like. If bed time rolled around in that time, the plate would be waiting for us in the morning. It generally took only one time of that to cure "picky". Same with cloths . . . If I didn't like what she bought us, she said she would let us go naked or shoeless. Pretty soon we learned arguing was futile. Im a pretty liberal and nu-age type person, but I never understand how an adult lets a kid dictate what they are going to do.
My mother did this. After three days she finally threw the eggs away. I was the tiny kid who wouldn't eat slimy things or anything with a strong smell. I would involuntarily gag if forced to put them in my mouth. I couldn't swallow them for the life of me. I still don't eat eggs, slimy vegetables, or anything cold-blooded. I am very happy with the variety of veggies that I do like, and I don't have any problems unless I'm a guest being served seafood. It just doesn't smell like food to me.
We taught our children that there is nothing wrong with the food or with them if they don't like it. We told them to say "It's not to my taste" when they were offered food they didn't like. We also taught them that people's taste changes over time. They were always very good eaters until our daughter hit middle school and began developing both body image and food texture issues. Thankfully now that she is an adult, she copes adequately, although she still doesn't like the different foods to touch on her plate.
My son went thru a picky phase as a teenager but it was mostly reserved for "combination" type foods, like a sandwhich, where he didn't like certain things together. That didn't effect me so it was his problem and not mine. Now that he's in his 20's he'll eat mostly everything and isn't picky anymore, but does avoid things that annoy him like lettuce and tomatoes on restaurant food when everyone knows it's the dregs and doesn't even taste like food anyway. A salad with good ingredients is fine though. Kind of like me avoiding things with super-hot salsa.
I don't think it is fair to blame food anxiety and your overall anxiety problems on your father. He did what he thought was right. Even if he had catered to you, I wouldn't be surprised if you found other anxieties to focus on. That's the nature of it.
I have an autistic child with food aversions. Fortunately, there are some great foods he likes, and he is frequently served new things alongside. He will try a bite, at best, and then weeks or months later, eat it. He is making good progress, but we have occupational therapists, people your dad likely didn't have, to help us. On a typical day, he eats bread
, milk, apples, strawberries, greek yogurt, homemade healthy nuggets, home cut baked fries, and a blue smoothie (with frozen spinach, nuts, and other horrible things). Not bad at all for an autistic 5 year old.
Parenting an extremely picky eater is absolutely exhausting and quite honestly, I really resent the idea that a kid can put us parents through that and then blame us for trying to help overcome the anxiety. We do NO favours by (pardon the pun), feeding the anxiety. You can't externalize everything, clearly you have mental health issues and improvement comes from owning your part in it.
I confess I am completely puzzled by picky eaters.
I had 7 kids. The rule in my house was that (aside from legit allergies) each kid could put up to 3 foods on the "I hate that" list. Other than that, they ate what was served. If the food disgusted them that much, bread, peanut butter and jelly was available as an alternative.
Never had a problem.
My sister raised a daughter who would only eat 15 foods by the time she was 6! She is 26 now and still only eats those 15 foods. As far as I can tell her mother allowed this behavior. Even our parents suggested she send her daughter to me for a summer. She thought my country life and my rough & tumble kids would be too traumatic for the kid. The kid got fat (400+ lbs), dropped out of high school and spends all day online or at the mall on her rascal scooter (she can't walk more than a few steps now). So sad.
Now I see my 3 yr old grandson being coddled as a picky eater and it drives me crazy!
His dad was never allowed to eat that way and I don't understand why he lets his kid do it. I asked him and his reasoning was that it was just easier to cater to a 3 year olds preferences than make a battle of it. I am just.....befuddled by this.
I'm with what this person ^ said in the bolded parts. My main point of puzzlement: how does a child become picky in the first place? I mean how does a little kid develop such a preference for certain foods that he/she won't eat anything else?
I have theories, but of course I could be wrong:
1. Perhaps modern-era parents who are overly-indulgent are going overboard in doing things differently from the overly-rigid way it was when they were young. As an example: a girl I knew had parents who insisted their kids eat every single thing the mother put in front of them, and when she had kids of her own she saw nothing wrong with allowing her child to live on nothing but hot dogs 'because that's all he likes.'
2. The modern-era emphasis on food must be 'fun' and/or 'cute.' Examples from when my youngest was a small child: Teddy Grahams cookies and Undercover Bears oatmeal.
3. Restaurants/fastfood places where parents let their kids pick whatever they want from the menus.
In contrast, I ended up in a no-rules environment where individuals remarked that I was too rigid or worse based on these factors:
1. You're expected to show up at the table at mealtime, unless you have a good reason not to (like an extracurricular activity);
2. If you put something on your plate, you have to eat it- taking a few bites, saying 'bleagh' and tossing it in the garbage isn't acceptable;
3. When there's a full meal with a variety of foods on the table, it's not acceptable to say 'I don't like any of those things, I'll go fix something else.'
You are actually wrong. My son was born picky. Would only eat one brand of formula (he was adopted so I didn't breastfeed), only would eat certain foods as a baby. I have older children and they aren't this way, so let's not blame the parents for everything.
I'm not an overly tolerant mother. If anything I'm on the tough side of parenting. If you had told me 10yrs ago that I would allow my child to have a peanut butter sandwich instead of whatever I made for dinner, I would say you were nuts. That was before I had a child not on the growth charts. Before I forced him to try a piece of asparagus when he was three and had him vomit all over the dinner table, before I learned what failure to thrive really means...lower IQ, growth stunting, behavior problems.
My son is 8 now and still picky. We do require he tries everything on his plate every time but he still makes a lot of peanut butter sandwiches.
I confess I am completely puzzled by picky eaters.
I had 7 kids. The rule in my house was that (aside from legit allergies) each kid could put up to 3 foods on the "I hate that" list. Other than that, they ate what was served. If the food disgusted them that much, bread, peanut butter and jelly was available as an alternative.
Never had a problem.
You offered good solutions. Allow them to hate certain foods and there's always an alternative.
When I had issues as a child, I was never looking to eat Oreos and Kool aid as someone said. I'd just preferred spinach to beets - while my sister preferred beets to spinach. Once in awhile mom made two veggies - there were 4 kids so they didn't go to waste.
You know I can totally relate and see where you are coming from. Its about being sensitive to your child and their needs. It isn't about a few veggies, its about seeing that your are torturing your child and just not caring...and keeping it up.
I had some thing similar. I was extremely ticklish. Like, way beyond normal. And I hated it. It was not fun, it was not funny, and it didn't feel good. It actually hurt. But the laugh reflex isn't something you can stop. So of course my crazy narcissist mother did it to the most extreme degree until I couldnt even get close to her without protecting my body by tensing up and rolling in a ball. I couldn't even hug my own mother without fear. And she thought it was FUNNY. The tickling was funny, the way I was when she got close to me was funny...the whole thing was just a freaking party trick.
I had lots of bad things happen to me growing up so I have all sorts of "issues" ...but the tickling really did leave a mark on my ability to be touched. It isn't so bad as an adult, but my nervous system is still wired that if you touch certain parts (i.e. neck) I will have a fight or flight reaction. And quite frankly, it makes me mad!
There is a difference between trying to be a good parent and making mistakes v. being a bully and refusing to be sensitive to your child's needs.
Last edited by Miss Blue; 08-10-2015 at 05:41 PM..
I'm sorry you went through that (I truly am, I also had an abusive father).
You're angry at an abusive parent, and not picky eating. Most of us are doing good jobs with our children, who have a variety of developmental/mental health issues, and we will continue to keep encouraging a variety diet. Your original post was about us not "fing with our kid's food" - very misleading.
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...but the tickling really did leave a mark on my ability to be touched. It isn't so bad as an adult, but my nervous system is still wired that if you touch certain parts (i.e. neck) I will have a fight or flight reaction. And quite frankly, it makes me mad! 
