Picky Eating

In this house, there are several picky eaters. I don't understand the whole picky eating thing. Sure, as a kid, I didn't like oatmeal or onions and I preferred my spaghetti sauce on the side so it didn't chap my chin. Vegetables weren't my favorite, but they were non-negotiable. We got to take turns picking the vegetable of the day. My mom was a notorious picky eater herself, regaling us with stories of sitting in the dining room for hours in front of mushroom soup. She worked with us pretty well. Aside from my tastes above, I was generally not a picky eater. To this day, new food is an adventure to me. I'll try just about anything.

My friend says that at her house, they just don't allow picky eaters, and all her kids eat everything. So have I enabled pickiness by trying to be nice? I don't know. At any rate, I never, ever wanted to create a battleground in the dining room. Power struggles over food know no bounds. In high school, my best friend was incredibly skinny. I ate dinner at his house a lot, and his mother was always pestering him to eat more. I'm sure it was subconscious at that point, but he didn't eat much. If we went out, he would sometimes eat 3 hamburgers. His mother's way of expressing concern was actually counterproductive.

So here I am, mother of 4 table-food eating children. We have never asked that our kids eat all of something they don't like. Our rules have been that they need to try everything before they could have seconds of anything. If you don't like anything, you can always have a piece of bread. Kandy was the type of toddler to whom I could say: "If you eat 3 more peas, you can have..." It worked like a charm. Missy had to get a little older before that kind of bargaining worked. Sunny, on the other hand, is of the personality type that nothing she doesn't want to do is worth the reward, and anything she really wants to do is worth the punishment. You know the type, I'm sure. So telling her to eat one more pea before she can have more rice just doesn't work. She'll get down from the table. Even her incredible sweet tooth would rather forgo dessert than succumb to tasting a bite of chicken. Despite our relatively simple (and nutritionally lax) rules, dinner had become a battleground.

About a month ago, we decided that she really isn't eating enough. In concern for her caloric needs, we agreed that we would completely drop the rules with her for a while to see what would happen. We have still been serving a little bit of everything to Sunny and gently reminding her that it is there with no specific orders or requests to eat it. If she wants seconds on rice, noodles, or bread, she can have them. Dinner time has become less stressful for all of us. And guess what? Last night we had sweet and sour meatballs. I cut her meatball in little pieces, and she actually ate one bite without being asked!!! It is a tiny victory, but it is a start in the right direction. There is hope that maybe if we do completely remove the battle, she will start to try everything. And part of it is age. Kandy is far less picky at nearly-nine than she was as a preschooler. By removing the battle and drama, perhaps she will more quickly outgrow it.