Another feeding kids post

Can we talk about food for kids yet again? But this time for older kids.

I'm feeling in a distinct and pernicious rut. My children are old enough to eat real, adult food, but they just seem to refuse to eat things that aren't the old stand-by foods (burritos, pizza, Cowboy Supper --hot dogs and baked beans--and homemade baked chicken nuggets that they help me bread).

Frankly, I'm sick of it, but demoralized that when I make the effort to put together something better they just turn their noses up. It doesn't seem worth it to put together something decent if I'm the only one who will eat it. But I'm not going to do the two meal thing.

I guess I'm looking either for ideas that will bridge the gap between homemade chicken nuggets and  braised monkfish with asparagus risotto. Last Sunday I roasted a chicken (it was amazing) and the kids barely even touched it.

So I need ideas, or assurance that at some point they will eat what's offered. (At this point they just refuse and go without eating, pretty much, and don't seem to care.)

Comments

[Lisa]

I hear you. I have the same issues. My two year old is refusing all of his favorites like mac n cheese (though we did find he likes the SHELLS, not available in single serve though) and he'll only eat fast food nuggets. Grrrrr. I'm looking forward to other comments.

By some miracle he ate his canned pumpkin with applesauce mixed in. I put it in front of him, not really expecting much, and he gobbled it down! I never know what to expect...

I told myself that when he turned two I would NOT be a short order cook but he would eat pretty much everything we are eating. I still find that I'm making easy side items like pb&j, quesadillas, thawing out premade oven fried chicken nuggets, etc.

[shirky]

I'm no help. I was (am) very stubborn and I ate like that mostly until I went overseas in college. I learned to eat other crazy things because that was all there was. There are still things I don't care for (seafood, lamb, white chocolate, coffee,...) but there is nothing I have not tried! So even if this 'phase' lasts and lasts...there is still hope for the future.

[AmyinMotown]

My daughter is going through a bit of a picky phase right now, too. Hate it. She'll only eat tacos, burritos, pasta, etc.

Stir fry? Maggie for some reason has loved tofu since she could eat solids, and will eat the rice and the vegetables.

I also made this pasta from Cooking Light the other night that she loved -- she asked for thirds. It was jarred roasted red peppers with sauteed onions, I added garlic although the recipe didn't call for it, half and half, and Parmesan. It should be searchable through the Cooking Light website. Super easy and good. I know my daughter will eat any kind of pasta, and is learning to like garlic as a result.

Baked potatoes with cheese and broccoli? Maybe ham too? Crepes? Salmon? Soup?

By way of reassurance, I was insanely picky as a kid, I did not know how my parents fed me. Now, I'll eat almost everything (although I still hate mushrooms and tomato sauce) and am a pretty good cook.

And I am glad to know I am not the only one who pretty much says "this is dinner, end of story." If they are hungry enough, they'll eat (although we will give Maggie a bedtime snack).

[Kathy B.]

The Mother's Credo: "This too shall pass."

Cook your meals, offer them. Don't offer alternatives. Either they'll eat or they won't. Eventually they will.

Yeah, I was a bit of a hard-ass as a parent.

They certainly will have likes and dislikes in foods, just like any person, but they will not be able to develop those preferences if they aren't offered (and encouraged to try) different foods.

(Disclaimer: As always, the above assvice is offered only barring any medical conditions that require special diets, etc.)

[Jill in Atlanta]

I guess I'm just mean. I cook what my husband and I want to eat and they can eat it or starve. They used to pick around at it, but now they'll eat all but the spiciest foods. Tonight I'm planning a 16 Cajun bean soup with kale. They've gotten used to my rules I guess. They certainly have never starved. (They are 4 & 7)

[marci]

yup. ellyn satter. you have something every meal that the kids are pretty sure to like, whether a side dish or the protein or whatever, bread of some type most every meal, and don't sweat it. no pressure at all, and neutral comments ('oh, i see you tried the trout.' 'hm, not into the asparagus today? well, thanks for giving it a try.') no short order cooking, no panhandling between established meal & snack times.

my only rule with baby j (2) is he's not supposed to throw food on the floor. that just gets right up my nose. i don't care if he doesn't eat it, but don't chuck it! grr. and thank goodness he's a great eater. barbecue, tofu, lima beans, collards, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, chicken, peas, anything not nailed down.

anyway, try the 'gateway' thing...if they like beef & bean burritos, try chicken & bean or beef & rice. if they like pepperoni pizza, try make-your-own pizzette night with pita or something & choice of toppings (that you can have leftovers of as a salad next day), etc. stretches, not jumps.

[Julie]

Um...we're still working on the eating as a family thing....let alone eating the same food. It's a pain in the ass. We are not ready to eat dinner (some aren't even home yet) at 4:30 PM, yet at the same time, if we give a snack to delay Alex's dinner, then he just won't eat dinner at all.

I HEAR that if they get hungry enough they'll eat anything....but the ugliness that precedes that point is more than I can bear. Not to mention the middle of the night wakings. I will be reading comments diligently today.

I do think, however, that we are on the precipice of something. I'm just not sure what.

[Alice]

I remeber a newspaper article talking about the author's children who were living with him in China, and how they ate cuttlefish in ink and fried beetles etc. So very smug. But an actual lesson to be taken from it was, keep putting it infront of them and they'll eventually eat it. I also read it can take at least 10 times of introducing a new food to a child before they will eat it. Keep trying! I finally got my son to eat red meat ( I know, I should've just let him be healthier and not!) after about a year of polite and not so polite refusal.
Getting the kids involved is a great way to get them to eat too.
Another idea rather than two meals is making meals w/ several parts and putting them together at the table, your kids eat only the parts they like. For example my son loves peas and carrots but not meat or sauce of any kind. Stir fry with noodles or rice is really easy this way, just leave all the components separate and everyone puts what they want on there plate. (meat, peas, carrots, corn, onion, celery) It's more bowls to clean, and takes marginally longer to cook that way, but he eats what he wants. it's all healthy and so much more satisfying than his nose turned up at my food.

[SarcastiCarrie]

How do you feed grown up food to someone without all their teeth? I've tried cutting it small, etc. I give the 3-yr old chicken and he either chews for 20 minutes or gags. Ditto steak. Ditto pork chops. He'll eat ham which is soft and chicken that has spent time in the crock pot, but grilled chicken? No way.

[Andromeda]

Well, *I* will eat your leftover monkfish and asparagus risotto. Yum.

[Charisse]

We still resort to quesadillas with beans and avocado, or fishsticks a couple of times a week (usually when Mouse is eating separately from us because one parent is late and we're planning a later, grown-up dinner). We're also fine with providing one of those basic alternatives if she really doesn't like what we're having. But she's been expanding lately, I'm happy to say, so I'll just share some of the "step up" foods that seem to work for everybody in our family (YMMV of course):

-chili! I've made a white bean, turkey version and a red bean, beef version...and a veggie version that have all been approved by Mouse. I just make it not too spicy and provide all the fixins in little bowls--cilantro, avocado, cheese, lime, scallions, etc. She really seems to like decorating it all up and then she eats it. :) I suspect a baked potato bar would be just as successful, but we will have to try that sometime when Mr. South Beach C. is not around.

-spaghetti with meatballs (but not meat sauce, go figure)

-salad, sometimes (that's because her favorite color is red and I told her the red leaves are extra special) --I make simple ones with a very basic lemon-and-olive-oil dressing

-chicken pot pie, though she won't touch the cooked celery

-slightly more "advanced" sausages like bockwurst or chicken apple (we usually have them with steamed artichokes which are fun because of the dipping but that's kind of a California special)

-beef stew (not too winey or oniony)

-roast pork tenderloin (which is super easy) I think she likes it because it's tender

It's still mostly "comfort food" but it's getting into more interesting comfort food and that feels like a nice overlap for now. Also, she's way more likely to easily try something that she helped me cook, so I try to involve her as much as a 4 1/2 year old can be...and also give her the job of setting the table. Hope that helps!

[Jac]

My son is little younger but eating really well (not meant as smug - we know we're lucky). I keep waiting for it to stop. However, so far, we've really been able to try lots of things. A couple hits:

1. Risotto - we make it all different ways, but as long as it is cheesy and has hunks of chicken in it - he loves it.

2. If no egg allergy, Omlettes - good method for us to get veggies in. Easy to do after work too.

3. Homemade pizzas - another great way to get veggies in - I learned from the Sneaky Chef to hide pureed spinich under the tomato sauce and it works like a charm (even on husbands). You don't even need pizza crusts, for lunch DS often just gets toast with spinich, tomoto sauce, cheese and whatever toppings are leftover in the fridge. I think this would be fun with older kids because they could help make the pizzas.

4. Veggie Burgers - With or without bun. Our guy is too little to eat a proper burger, so we just lighly pan-fry a veggie burger, melt some cheese, chop it up and it's great finger food.

5. Scallops pan fried with lots of garlic. Cool, right?

6. Pork Schnitzle - in our house we make them basically the same as chicken nuggets, but with pork.

7. Any kind of chunky soup or stew, or chilli, even mild curry. I don't mind too much if DS picks through his meal and only eats what he wants (i.e. if we make beef stew he usually only eats the beef and potatos, and won't touch the veggies).

If you have a lot of standbys, could you try to mix those up. DS loves cheese, and has it at almost every meal in some capacity, so I usually have about six different varieties in the house - so at least he's getting a variety tastes. Same with sausages, I try to switch up among pork, beef, and chicken sausages.

Hope those are helpful. I'm looking for some new ideas too because my problem isn't that DS won't eat, but that I'm not a good cook and short on time at the end of the day.

[Jill in Atlanta]

@SarcasitCarrie: I skipped any and all meat until my kids could chew it. We eat meat at almost every dinner, but he'd have the sides and, if he really needed more protein (seldom) we'd give him some kidney beans straight from the can.

[Shannon]

I just want to know why my kid won't eat chicken unless it's in nugget form or on a stick.

[beate]

I'm with the previous posters who say that kids will get used to a balanced diet if that's all that's on offer. "Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right" by Joel Fuhrman (who basically advocates for a vegan diet, though he doesn't really call it that) makes that point forcefully. Sometimes it may take a couple, three weeks for the kids to get used to it, but they will not starve.

Now, in reality, I modify this approach somewhat to take into account my 3yo's preference for starchy foods. So I cook grains (quinoa, various sorts of rice, farro) for her, even though I'd skip grains if I were just cooking for myself.

Our dietary situation is made a bit more complicated by the fact that our kid eats lunch and snack provided by the daycare center. Usually not the most inspiring food choices, but not garbage either. That and the exposure to peers who practice saying "icky" all day restrict her willingness to try out new foods, but not too much.

[Elizabeth]

I lie to my kid.

He loves noodles, so we call anything white and starchy a noodle. He loves chicken, so all meat is called chicken. He loves carrots, so green beans are "little green carrots."

This wouldn't work for an older kid, but so far, we've convinced ours to try a lot of things and after a couple of mis-namings, we call them the right name and he knows he likes them, so it's not an issue.

He's also the weirdest little boy - loves pretty much all veggies and beans and tofu, but fruit?! Won't even try it.

[Joy]

@Kathy B. and JillInAtlanta- I'm in your camp. My olders (8 and 6), who have historically been very open about new foods, are in 'lunchroom mode' now and everything new I put in front of them initially gets an 'eeewwww!!!'. Which is not allowed, but it happens anyway. So, they have a choice whether to eat or not, but not to order their choice of replacement. Usually after a few exposures to said new food, they acquiesce, and sometimes I even get a 'YES!! I loooovveee Calamari!!!', or whatever, out of them eventually. If at first you don't succeed...

[shirky]

also, don't underestimate the power of ketchup.

[ML]

Luckily, I consider my almost 2-yr-old son pretty easy when it comes to eating, but he's becoming more and more conservative about what he eats for dinner. I feel vaguely guilty that sometimes he doesn't eat much for supper, but I think those are just times when he's not very hungry (I hope!). I refuse to be a short-order cook, so I just make something I know my son will like at least twice a week. The rest of the time is for perhaps discovering something new that he will eat--I would have never found out that he likes chicken curry if it were not for the experimentation nights!

[CG]

I'm an Ellyn Satter devotee, too. We've had some periods of fussiness (right now we're in a good period, thank goodness) but they've passed.

But I wanted to respond to the other part of your post, Moxie, because my husband travels a lot and often it's just me and the kid for dinner. It's hard to get up the motivation to cook a "real" dinner for one adult and one two-year-old. Especially since even though he's generally a good eater, like most two-year olds he's somewhat hit or miss on whether he feels like eating on any given day.

I rely heavily on recipes from Real Simple, because they're often quick, so you don't feel like you've slaved over a hot stove for little reward, and they feel like "real" dinners. I would just keep making the food you like to eat, make sure there's something "taste-neutral" as part of it (rice, squash, corn, bread--or heck, cornbread!), and wait it out. I also always keep an Amy's frozen pizza around for emergency REALLY-don't-feel-like-cooking nights.

[Kirsten]

My husband and I were raised in homes where you ate what was put before you or you did not eat at all. Same expectation goes for our kids. I am not a short order cook. Thankfully, our daughter loves a wide range of foods - sashimi anyone? - and we hope the same holds true for our son.

We are not going to force them to eat something they truly do not like but they at least need to taste it first.

[hedra]

It is 10 taste exposures to get them to accept it.

Getting to tasting it is harder.

I'm a fan of Ellyn Satter's books. What's hard to see from the parent side is the overall flow of the transitions.

So, my notes on the subject:

1) about 40% of all kids go hyper picky between 2 and 5 years old. At 5, they start being more curious about novel foods, but aren't really INTO them until maybe 8-10 years old, and for some kids not until 12-14. And for epeepunk, not until we started dating (mid-20's). Heh.

2) Of those pickier eaters, 70% of them have a genetic predisposition to resistance to new foods. You didn't cause it. That's just to help reduce the stress factor.

3) Appetite is lowest after about 4-5 PM for young kids. The appetite range varies by child, but expecting new foods to be interesting when they're not really feeling so hungry? Not happening.

4) Eating is a learned behavior over a long span of time. It gets frustrating for us way before it bothers them. Family meal, family meal, family meal. Set the expectations of what is food in our family.

5) Trying a new food and moving to acceptance happens in stages. The feeding clinic said that this is a staged process, and for some kids, if you jump stages it is worse. First is sight - they have to be used to seeing it. Next is proximity - it takes time to get used to having it near you (this is also a biological safety reaction - don't get too close to scary-looking or weird-looking stuff!). THEN, get used to the texture. This is the poke-it-with-a-stick phase. After that, it is touch exploration (the 'I don't like it' after 'tasting' it with a fingertip). Then it is the tiny nibble (testing for toxicity) step. After that, the exploration for acceptability (the slightly larger nibble with thoughtful look). After that, you may get acceptance. And then even that will go through cycles, and you've only got to the first 'exposure' for those 10 exposures needed for acceptance for most foods by most kids.

6) Know Thyself - it's important to know whether this is a Big Huge Issue for you personally (which makes it harder to observe your kids dispassionately, IMHO cough-me-cough). When we react emotionally it is often to the message, not the food. Granted, what you're talking here Moxie is just frustration about the process of a) growing up, and b) just making freakin' dinner ONCE for pity's sake! That's just normal life issue, not 'food issue'.

So, what we've done:

Background: Mr G had a feeding disorder that was basically really severe neophobia (fear of new foods) based on many traumatic oral experiences. He was food-defensive, and any food that ever made him uncomfortable even slightly was forever written off. He had the red-flag issues: a) long-term weight percentile decline after 1 year or weaning (after weaning in particular, regardless of age), b) fear reaction when exposed to new foods, and c) refusal to taste even when allowed to spit back out. NORMAL feeding kids even picky ones don't have those three signs. He had all of them. Sigh.

So, we did the oral retraining for stimulus process (the black-white divide between good and awful was set waaaaaay over at the high side. That is, if it was 100% yummy high-feedback food - salty, sweet, or fatty - it was fine. If it was 98% yummy, it was GROSS, EVIL, DISGUSTING, or even registered as physical pain. No gray zone, and only the highest feedback foods were okay. Pizza, donuts, chocolate, pretzels. Toss in a texture aversion... yeah. Fun.

After just retraining his mouth, it was two separate processes:

1) getting him used to new foods by visual, proximity, and tactile stages, then asking him to taste. He was for a while required to taste, because he was so deeply distrusting. He discovered that there were things he liked, and things he didn't, and that allowed him to expand the possibles. He's still pretty restricted, though.

2) Family meal culture. We blew this one with him by doing short-order cooking too much. I was told to have a backup meal for him, but was NOT told (pre-clinic) that it was important for that backup food to be part of the family meal. So, we now make one major meal, unless we're having a short-order day. We make one protein, one starch, one veg, and that's what's available. They can opt out to have oatmeal or something they can make themselves, but we don't offer that. At first, we had this:

Me: What do you want on your plate? We've got
Child: I want hotdogs and corn and rice.
Me: You didn't let me finish. We have steak and noodles and peas.
Child: I want hotdogs!
Me: Sorry, don't have any made. Would you just like the rice and peas?
Child: BUT I WANTED HOTDOGS... (pause) Please, can I have hotdogs?
Me: Thanks for asking nicely, but we aren't having hotdogs. Steak, rice, peas.
Child: Just peas. I'll eat just peas.
Me: Okay. Peas it is. (cheerily)

After about an eon (probably six months) they transitioned to:

Me: What do you want? We've got...
Child: Hotdogs!
Me: Um, no hotdogs. Salmon, rice, and corn.
Child: I don't like salmon. I'll have rice and corn.
Me: Okay, rice and corn it is.

MUCH better. (I just realized that how we phrase it might be part of the problem - we say 'what do you want' instead of what shall I serve you... sends them down the wrong path. Huh. Learned something!)

So, we still have days where we have lovely roast chicken, or slow-cooked lamb shanks, or salmon, and they only want hotdogs. Sometimes we'll make them the hotdogs anyway, but mainly we ask them to try the food (if it is new or an infrequent item), and if they don't like that, they can have whatever else we're having, which is always at least one item that they enjoy - rice noodles, rice, potatoes, peas, corn, cucumbers, carrot sticks, whatever. Mr G declines to join us most days, but he mainly gets his own meal - he eats pizza or cereal or yogurt for dinner, and joins in on the veggies (most days) - but he also has become willing to taste new foods, and just doesn't like most of them. We discovered (after the feeding clinic) that he's also a super-taster, with a very strong reaction to flavor. He's quite brilliant at telling me what is missing from a dish (I've asked him to taste to help prepare a dish) but actually eating it is more stimulation than he can cope with. He's okay, and growing (even if not as well as he might if he ate a more balanced diet), but... we're okay on that. The rest of the kids go through strong phases where they want nothing that we're offering, and decide that MAYBE they'll just eat rice tonight. So they just eat rice.

I learned from the feeding clinic to average over at least 10 days, not one, not three, and certainly not just one meal. If they don't get much protein today, that's okay, they'll go nuts on it in a week. Some nights all Miss M eats is meat - no starch, no veg.

Lessee, other strategies...

1) Make a simple meal with minimum spices, but make a sauce on the side just for the grownups, and let the kids 'dip' into it if they want.

2) Provide a series of shakers or grinders of herb blends at the table, so everyone can do their own. Keep them salt-free unless you don't mind listening to your kids crunch on all the salt they applied. We use sea-salt grinders a lot - slightly lower sodium, and it makes eating into a process or activity.

3) Eat with other families when we can - seeing other food cultures can improve their appreciation of their own; The point isn't 'see, THEY eat what their parents make' but 'hey, wow, look at what other kids eat, how interesting!' It's not supposed to be peer pressure, but an additional layer of information and observation they can add to their experience. "Kids eat grownup food" is hard to grasp if they haven't seen kids eat grownup food. Ever.

4) Cooking classes. Seriously, they'll eat stuff for other people they'll never eat for you. More if they got to make it. Or at least, they'll try it. There's a Young Chef's Academy (franchise) near us, where they do birthday parties, cooking classes, etc. We are now making pizza at home (gluten-free, unspiced sauce, manchego sheep cheese, actually not bad!) because of a birthday party there. Even Mr G tried it, WITH SHEEP CHEESE ON IT. Events like that can change the expectations.

Mainly, it it long, takes time, and takes assuming that only these things are going to table - and if there's kid food there, it is an option for the adults (the adults should partake), so that the expectation is these are OUR foods, not 'us-kids'-foods' and 'your foods'. And it will get better in surprising ways when you have given up expecting it. Like, when they're 8, or 10, or when (like ep) they bring home their girlfriend for dinner, and she lets them try it off her plate.

My brain hurts - that probably needs edits, but hopefully it carries enough info to help.

[amy]

i have a problem with a definition, i guess. there's a giant push to not be a short order cook, and on the whole i agree because leaving kids to choose the menu every meal of every day is not a great idea; however, the idea of having one or two things at every meal that you know the kid will eat is not always that far from preparing two meals. for instance, if my husband and i want a steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans for dinner, then there is nothing there for the tot (4.5) to eat, no matter how hungry she is*.

if i want to offer her two gimmes, then i still have to make extra food. the only difference, it seems to me, is in how much of it i make. do i make just enough to put on a plate for her? (which is appropriate amount since my husband and i are not going to eat chicken nuggets or crust of garlic bread in addition to the steak, etc.) or do i make enough for all of us merely to present an illusion that we're all eating that? i cannot bring myself to waste that food and i am not going to eat like she does. period.

that said, i try to eat lunch with her. if she's having peanut butter sandwiches on crackers, i'll sit with her and have a sandwich of my own choosing - usually lunch meat. even just being exposed to a food at the table but on someone else's plate counts as exposure, especially for fussy eaters.

if i can get her to do it, i have her make her sandwiches, with help when needed. she's always more likely to eat it if she made it, and she'll often tolerate more peanut butter on the sandwiches if she put it there instead of me. this is one way she pushes her own boundaries.

*here's the brick of salt: the tot has feeding issues - texture/tactile/taste hypersensitivity, food anxiety, and a wicked quick gag reflex. we've been working with occupational therapists and infant/child mental health clinicians on this. certainly this is not everyone's situation.

[Moxie]

Man, I long for the days when my kids were 2 and I could lie to them or just put it in front of them. At this point they're past that. And the "go bump your head" method (which is what I was raised with) leaves things very lonely for me and a big waste of food and effort. Because if they're not going to eat it, I might as well just have a salad.

Honestly, I don't have the mental energy to make something and put it in front of them 10 times. Meals shouldn't be that much work.

[pocha]

I've tried everything, but my two year old still basically eats the same few foods: yogurt (with honey or else), bananas, cheereios, noodles, milk (cow and soy), watered down juice (when he has coughs), grapes, oranges, grilled cheese "samiches", toast w/ peanut butter. there are a few more things he'll consider, but vegetables and most proteins are simply not options.

I guess I haven't tried "everything" -- in the end we haven't yet done the whole "eat this or eat nothing at all thing," because when we try to do this he opts for nothing. And then I worry that he'll wake me up at 4AM to eat, at which point I'll be far too tired to play the game all over again.

But my gut tells me that this is the only way to win this one: a little more school of pain (i.e. don't give them options?!).

[amy]

one reason many kids don't like (read: struggle with) sauce or soup is the mixed texture. as adults, we've gotten skilled at drinking the fluid while holding on to the solids, then chewing the solids, but kids are still working on that. for some, it's a matter of flavor, of course. so if that means adding the sauce after you've pulled out the kid's portion, don't beat yourself up about doing it. when they're ready for the flavor of the sauce or the mixed texture, they'll let you know.

with the tot, when she tries/eats/enjoys a challenge food, our OT taught us to have some narrative time after the meal is over. we talk through a list of all of the things she ate and we identify the challenge foods. "i saw you ate some apple chips - those are new - and so are the cheese cracker sandwiches." then, because the tot often forgets in her anxiety that she has tried a food, we draw pictures of what she ate, and we reference those pictures if we need her to remember that she has eaten this food already and liked it. talking about food outside of mealtime works for us to help build her positive ideas about foods.

all of the stuff we're doing, for what it's worth, is based on kay toomey's models of learning to eat, which hedra has very briefly summarized in #5 of her list. be aware that for some kids, it takes more than 10 exposures and sometimes he/she will need 10 exposures at each level before accepting it. of course not every child is like this, but my soapbox dead horse is the prevailing idea that all children learn to eat the same way, and it's not true. moxie's kids sound - at least from the post - like pretty average kids, but not everyone stopping by here will have average kids.

[flea]

Our policy is if you don't like what's for dinner, you can have a peanut butter sandwich. You must have an honest bite to try it first. But we almost never have to go there - they pick & eat the chick peas out of the "yucky" stew, or eat the rice but not the lentils. We do cook less adventurously than we did before kids, but to some extent that's exhaustion and need for speed. There are some things my 5 year old consistently doesn't like, and I respect that to the extent that it's reasonable - she doesn't like spinach in anything, so I make a half-spinach half plain lasagna, and leave it out of lentil soup; she will not touch dried fruit or cooked fruit (hates pie!); she doesn't like thing too garlicky or spicy (have to watch the hummus and Indian food). That's honest taste that I respect - and she eats things like Kalamata olives, feta cheese, any meat, and tom yum soup with glee, so.

Moxie, maybe try a "new foods" night once a week - make is a special event, and they help pick the recipe/ethnic cuisine, or plan the shopping, or help cook, or all of the above? If you pick foods from other countries, do a little background on the place. A weekly night of excitement might help you be less bored and making it an event might get them over some mental hurdles to like new things.

[CG]

Ok, another try. My sister was a VERY picky eater partly due to medication she was on suppressing her appetite. In late elementary school, instead of listening to her whining at dinner all the time, my parents allowed her to try or not try the food as she liked, but not complain about it. If she didn't like it she could quietly get up and make herself a PB&J and come back to the table. It worked pretty well. We all ate together and there was much less whining about how disgusting the food was (which it wasn't). She now eats a pretty normal range of foods.

[Michelle G]

We are working on this with our 4 year old. Generally, during the week, I make whatever entree I want and she can eat it or not. BUT I do let her pick out which frozen veggie the family is having and our rule is that she can have dessert (often fruit or yogurt) if and only if she eats her veggies. I don't care if she eats the meat or starch because most days she gets some of both at one meal or another- the veggies are a sticking point for us. Also- I am considerate about some clear hates...for example, I know she hates pasta sauce...so I save some noodles with no sauce for her if I'm doing pasta.

@Sarchasticarrie-

We don't give our 14 month old much meat, but I always give him a little to try because our pediatrician said that trying different textures such as meat and toast is important at his age.

We do cut it up in miniscule bites and he spits a lot of it out. The exception is dark meat rotisserie chicken, which he loves and can eat easily because it is slippery. Also very tender meats like beef-chuck-in-the-crock pot (pot roast) or slow-cooked pork butt are good candidates.

[amy]

@pocha,
i fear that 4 o'clock wake up, too. what we do is a modified "this is dinner, that's it" approach. i make her dinner, which she often refuses. i remind her "this is dinner. that's it." then, because we have a late bedtime, about a half an hour before bed, i offer a snack. the snack is always cereal or peanut butter crackers. i limit the quantity of snack so that she can't quite count on snack if she didn't like dinner, but it's enough to offset the hungries and quell the whining.

i'm probably breaking every rule you can break, but whereas some families are "sleep by any means necessary", we are "fed by any means necessary". i'm okay with that because i know we're also working to get closer to a normal model of eating for the tot.

[Tamar]

This is still theoretical for me (eats-like-a-bird 15-month-old, still nursing lots), but...

I hear the not a short-order cook thing, I really do. But I worry what would happen if I had to rely on someone else to make dinner every single night, who never made anything that I liked at all. Say, my husband. He and I have polar opposite tastes. Not just BBQ vs. Thai, but I barely eat meat and he barely eats anything else. Yeah, I wouldn't starve, but I'd be hungry all the time. I'd hate to do the same thing to my child, you know? Most nights we essentially make two different dinners already. Sigh.

[Alisha]

My playgroup is in the habit of conducting regular recipe idea exchanges with the goal of increasing the amount of vegetables we can get our almost two year olds to eat. Here's a list of the ideas from this week. I have quite a bit more but this seemed like enough to post for now. It may not be exactly what Moxie was looking for but might help someone else.

Trader Joe's shopping list:
Gorgonzola Gnocchi on hand. You just put it in a skillet and warm it. Add either chopped spinach or peas to it.
Mini quiches
Spinach Hummus
Quinoa Bagels
Alexia all natural Chicken nuggets with Broccoli and Cheese
Spinach pancakes ( Dr. someone makes them)
All fruit Jelly

Quinoa enchiladas:
Cook quinoa (2cups of water to 1 cup quinoa) for 15 minutes
Add a bunch of sauteed veggies to it (eg: spinach, carrots, corn, zucchini / Optional: Chicken)
Add cheese, roll it is tortilla, cover with enchilada sauce and bake for 20 minutes.

Homemade chicken nuggets with sweet potato and cauliflower:
Mix flax seed and whole wheat bread crumbs with some spices of choice in one bowl.
In another, mix sweet potato puree and cauliflower puree, an egg, Parmesan cheese and garlic.
Roll chicken in wet mixture then in the dry mixture.
Fry in a pan with olive oil.

Burger with everything:
Chop or puree every veggie you can think of.
Mix it with burger meat, one egg and some whole wheat bread crumbs or flax seed.

Vegetable medley:
Ingredients:
Zucchini
Carrots
Spinach
1 clove of garlic
Optional: Meat or Tofu
Directions:
Blend in the food processor
Mix with tomato sauce.

Ways to "hide" vegtables in other foods:
Grate raw beets into yogurt or oatmeal.
Spinach and cauliflower puree in meals (eg: eggs to whole wheat mac and cheese)
Sweet potato or pumpkin puree in french toast and pancakes
Carrots in oatmeal/raisin muffins and cookies

[Katie]

I'm also a HUGE fan of Ellyn Satter fan (her book's Child of Mine: Feeding Your Child with Love and Good Sense). Honestly, it's the one parenting book I've read where I felt like my parenting choices actually made things better---most of the time it's hard for me to tell!

How about making a pot of soup that has a few ingredients that they're likely to eat, like beans or chicken or macaroni? Then you can always freeze yourself portions even if they turn up their noses and it won't seem like such a huge effort. I have several soups that my kids pick through, and last time my six-year-old suddenly started eating the spinach out of it. She said that she loved the soup so much that it wasn't worth the effort of trying to avoid the spinach since she could hardly taste it anyway.

I frequently leave things a bit disassembled so that it's easier for the kids to pick through. For ex., one of our favorite recipes is a gnocchi/chickpea/collards/cheddar cheese recipe, and I usually leave some chickpeas plain from the can and leave the collards separate. Then they'll eat everything but the greens.

If you want, I have a recipe for these little Asian burgers that my kids love.

On the Cooking Light site, there's a "Curried Chicken with Mango Relish" that's extraordinarily easy if you just buy a jar of mango chutney instead. My kids love this so much I have to double the chicken. Then you can have a mixed veggie side dish and put some jarred Indian sauce on top of yours. Actually, this originally came with a cucumber/yogurt/mint salad that we make--the kids just eat some plain cucumbers. And then if you serve it with rice, the kids won't starve no matter what.

[Mazlynn]

Your comment about them liking the homemade chicken nuggets that they've helped with makes me wonder if getting them involved in the cooking process might help them be more interesting in eating it. Obviously not a possibility every day given normal hectic meal schedules, but if you try to have them involved in helping with making the "grown up food" as much as possible (measuring, stirring, etc), or even have them "make" a meal (with lots of parental supervision and help) once in a while, it might help with that whole exposure issue and make them curious enough to try a little bit of the new foods.

(Of course I am most definitely NOT the voice of experience here - my kid is still waiting to be introduced to the world outside my body, much less real foods. But just some brainstorming for you to do with as you wish.

[marci]

absolutely true, amy - thanks to you & hedra for a 'different from average' perspective.

moxie, i read somewhere ('til we meet again', romance novel) that in france it's a tradition to make a wish each time you eat a new-to-you food. i dunno if it's a 'real' tradition, but it might help some kids screw their courage to the sticking place.

[caramama]

The only suggestion I can think of that hasn't already been said is something my mom used to do when we were little. She cooked dinner almost every night. But occasionally, we would have "silly supper" nights where we could have cereal or a sandwich or something easy that we picked. As an adult, I realize my mom just didn't want to cook that day. But as a child, it was a fun night to have something we didn't usually have for dinner.

This doesn't exactly address getting them to eat the dinner, but I think that we were more likely to eat regular dinners and not ask for sandwiches or hot dogs because we know that silly supper nights were the nights for that.

[Katie]

Oh! Another easy one is to give them chicken nuggets and use the nuggets to make myself a buffalo chicken salad.

[Charisse]

Oh also Moxie, if you're looking to get the boys more into thinking about food in general, they might get a kick out of Iron Chef. Don't know to what extent your ex cooks, but if they could use a male model for interest in food and taste, it's a really fun show and there's no violence or sex, obviously. :) We've let Mouse watch it 3 or 4 times on rainy days and she's really liked it...and I haven't put this part into practice mainly because Mouse already likes to cook, but you could totally play a little Iron Chef game with making and tasting dinner.

Also, does food come up in any of the books they like? We got onto the chicken pot pie thing because Mouse's teacher read "Nancy and Plum" to her school class, so maybe that's another entree into their thinking, so to speak.

Just another thought, though I know exactly what you mean about the mental energy, especially on weeknights.

[giddy]

My older daughter, almost 9, liked everything as a toddler and didn't start finding foods objectionable until she was in school and learned that other kids were allowed to reject foods. So, there are things she won't eat now that she loved as a little kid, like carrots and hummus and cucumbers and on and on. But we just keep serving everything we always served, and even when she groans and complains about what's being served, more often than not, she eats and asks for seconds. I was so gratified last week when we had guests over and out of the blue, she said, "Mom, thank you for making this wonderful dinner [Italian wedding soup]--it's delicious!" and my guests said, "hey, when are MY kids going to say that?"

Our 4-year-old is following the same pattern. She has only recently begun to express food dislikes, and they are often of foods she happily ate one week before. So in her case, we are chalking it up to "testing us" and more than that, just general reduction in appetite that goes along with being in between growth spurts. She just doesn't eat at all when she doesn't want what we're having.

I agree with all the suggestions to have at least one usually accepted food on the table so that there is something for them to eat, but in practice I have found it hard to identify the "usually accepted food," given my kids' recent decisions to be offended by something they previously liked. Ah well....

Good luck everyone!

[Rachel]

My own mother's take on it:

They won't starve.

Her other brilliant discovery? When she didn't want to share with us she told us we wouldn't like it because it was grown-up food. Natch, we decided on the spot that we would love it forever! Hence my adoration of fried chicken livers to this very day.

[caramama]

Oh, another idea: my brother and I loved frozen peas (they were like candy!), but not cooked peas. So my hubby and I have tried giving the Pumpkin frozen peas and frozen green beans, and she will eat those when she won't eat them cooked. So sometimes they will eat things frozen/raw/cooked or cooked in a different way.

[Mom2Boys]

I think that you should make at least one meal a week that *you* want to eat and then just plan on leftovers for lunch the next day. Because you sound bored with what they want to eat but too tired to fix a big meal every night that is just ignored. So, fix what you want that one night and offer it and if they don't want it you can either choose to fix them something super quick - cereal for example - so you can all eat together, or make sure you include in whatever is on the menu that night one thing they will eat so you aren't eating alone.

[Fahmi]

I was fairly picky as a kid - my father had two rules about food: ONE - you ate what was on the table. No, can I have a grilled cheese sandwich instead? Or stuff. TWO - you couldn't get up from the table until you'd taken at least a bite of every dish on the table (dinner tended to be three items each night). My brother would eat a bite each immediately and get up, and not eat if he didn't feel like it. I would just whine and cry and be a brat until two hours later, when my brother is off playing, my mother is done cleaning up, and I am the only one still at the table. And then I would finally give in, eat a bite, and then get up. My parents couldn't understand why I would hold out for so long. It eventually ended - I stopped being too picky by the time I was 9. (Now I eat everything)

We've done the same thing with the kids. The older one would say "I don't like this." We reply, "Too bad, you still have to eat three bites." So far he hasn't exhibited my stubborness, so whew!

In terms of food, I like the idea said above, about just substituting things. If the kids like chili, try it with different beans, or veggie, or different meat. I actually like making chili with sweet potatoes and pumpkin.

Since they like chicken nuggets, how about doing the same with other meats, or even fish? Yesterday, I made nuggets using swordfish. Beef is good, too, although I prefer lamb.

I also like to make "fries" using eggplant, squash, pumpkin, asparagus, string beans. Dip them into a paste made of chick-pea flour and water, pan fry. It doesn't soak up as much oil as tempura would.

If the food looks like something they already like, the kids in my family seem to be willing to try new variations. Especially if they get to help making it.

Good luck

[hedra]

@Moxie, it isn't so much 'make a meal and put it in front of them 10 times' as 'make what you like as often as you like, and after 10 exposures they may decide to like it, too'. With caveats that we're not trying to make them miserable by never having what they like, just don't give up because the roast chicken went untouched. It went untouched a long time with us, too. But now we've got some refinements - Miss M likes the skin, and some dark meat. Miss R likes light meat, Mr B likes food he can handle so the drumsticks are his fave (but he will eat whatever), and Mr G will sometimes eat a drumstick, but prefers fried chicken to roasted.

For us, breakfast and lunch are on their preference - short-order, no problem.

@Tamar, the point is to run the range. So, we have stuff they LOVE more often than we'd have for ourselves, but we make a version we'll eat, and they'll eat, both, if possible. If your husband wouldn't put himself on the downstream end some portion of the time when he's cooking, then I find I'm not thinking very fondly of him - what, he wouldn't include you in the planning? YES, include the kids in the planning, accommodate within the schedule, just not every blessed day their favorite thing. Everyone can find a way to incorporate what the others like, or to decline it AS IF IT WERE A REAL OPTION. For example, put out the chicken nuggets in a bowl for serving, and offer them around. The adults can model saying 'no thank you, I don't care for any tonight' or whatever, and they're still verbally assigned as 'OUR food'. We DO have hotdog dinners, and (had) chicken nugget dinners, and pizza dinners, and order out for chinese food, because that's favored by the kids. We also have salmon dinners when we know very well that two of the kids don't much like salmon. We tend to ask in advance if they want something else added to the meal, but at this point, mostly it is just 'I'll have some oatmeal, too' or, as I said, we *do* allow short-order sometimes, when it is appropriate. "I know you hate this meal, I wanted to have it, I've made something else to accommodate your needs, too." BUT everything else in the meal is then something we all eat. I don't make mashed potatoes much because the kids don't eat them. But I find other things to do with potatoes that we all like.

For now, that means we don't eat soup, or stew, or things with a lot of sauces and mixed textures. I take the long view - we will get there eventually. I can live without soup once a week, even though I grew up on soup at least twice a week.

I don't bother with the hiding, or thinking too hard about it. I don't have that kind of time. What I do is make what we know goes over most of the time for a couple of the items, but leaning toward the future model (adult or simplified adult version). If I want to introduce something I've missed, I add it to the list, but only ONE new item at a time. Like, I added asparagus along with peas. I ate all of it the first time that happened (mm, leftover asparagus). But now we know that Miss R loves asparagus, so now we buy it when she wants it, and we both enjoy it, and yes, there are two veggies, or sometimes NO other veggies, and everyone else eats the starch and protein. My kids eat veggies at lunch, and regularly at snack at school, so I'm not too fretful about dinner.

Hmm. I guess because I am very flexible on what I eat, myself, I don't have trouble eating whatever it is. We almost all live within the FODMAP diet for the kids, so we're cooking from scratch 95% of the time. It keeps the options simple, since we don't have much time, and overall, it doesn't seem to be too expensive (it would be harder if we had a smaller family, though - we can easily buy cheaper in bulk when we're feeding six people). It took me two weeks to get over being pissed off about having to cook from scratch all the time, but then I discovered that it didn't really take more time, if I knew what I wanted to cook. It was just practice cooking the dishes that was lacking.

@Amy, we also have some of the same strategies, but I've integrated them so far I don't even notice them anymore (like talking about what they ate that was new - but not at mealtime, and reminding them about other times they had something). Thanks for detailing the other activities, and the fact that the 10-instance thing can be for each layer in the process - certainly they expected it to be a minimum of two weeks for each stage with Mr G, and that was with daily exposures to the same thing.

Oh, and don't try hiding foods with a super-taster. Seriously. Mr G can taste the burnt in the crust of pale white bread, he can identify gradations of salt, bitter, sour, etc. that I can only recognize in theory. He can taste way more than I ever could. And smell, too. He'd make a good perfumer.

[hedra]

Oh, and @pocha, get the books recommended - they'll help you formulate an appropriate plan, I suspect. Your kid is exactly spot-on typical. And even with 12 foods ('typical picky'), they almost never lose out on any of the major nutrients, and most micro-nutrients. I was absolutely shocked that Mr G, in full food-defensive mode, was short only on vitamin A, and only a little short at that. HOW? I don't know. But every time I start to worry that his diet just looks *wrong*, I run it through the My Pyramid Tracker (the fda.gov site), and sure enough, he's usually a smidge low on vitamin A, and on fiber, but he's okay on everything else. In fact, usually near perfect - despite the bizarre unbalanced appearance of his diet.

[Laura]

I just lost part of a comment, so apologies if this is a repeat....

Moxie, my boys are similar ages to yours (7 and 5) and I feel your pain. I also work outside the home so, like you, dinner planning can't be too complicated. Here are a couple things we've tried:

I quantified how often I am willing to serve the "favorites". For me it's about once a week for each thing (at either lunch or dinner). I wish I could get away with doing it less often than that, but there it is. But committing to a certain frequency, and planning ahead, helps me avoid using the favorites as fall-back dinners when I'm tired and don't want meal-time battles. I'm also more careful about watching the school hot-lunch menu now too, since I'd rather pack a cold lunch than "lose" my pizza night for the week to a pizza hot lunch.

I also had the boys make lists of their favorite fruits and vegetables (things they have committed to eating when served without complaint). I make sure to serve these when the main dish is not as much to their liking. I also serve other (supposedly yucky) fruits and vegetables on nights when we have the main dish kid-favorites so that they have the opportunity to try some other things and so I don't get sick of carrots and apples. With this system, there's always something they will eat without complaint and there's some semblance of a rotation of foods.

I am also trying to commit to one new recipe each month in the hopes of adding to the boys' repertoire of favorites. I have had some luck with this and actually stumbled onto a veggie casserole recipe that they like! Getting recipe ideas from other moms with similar aged kids is a good place to start with this.

My neighbor with teenagers says her kids are just now getting more flexible with food so I think part of my frustration is that I had expected their tastes to broaden after the toddler years and that was a bit unrealistic. Good luck, and let us know if you try anything new and meet with some success!

[Sarah]

Well, getting them to branch out is a good thing. My kids have been very good eaters, willing to try, willing to eat the family meal. This sounds obnoxious, but on the nights I make a meal really well (not every night for sure), everyone eats more.

General ideas--casseroles of things they like generally put together in new ways. Or taking apart meals so you don't notice so much that they're eating it differently--fajitas or taco bar?

And now I am going to be shocking and admit I make multiple meals lots of night. But it is not the kids' faults, it is the grown-ups'. My parents live with us and eat with us every night. My dad is an old school meat and potatoes guy. My parents don't like ethnic--growing up, spaghetti was still ethnic food at my house--although I have slowly added in more foods that we have stir fry and spaghetti and even fajitas fairly often. So I can say that repeated offerings will get results, slowly.

My husband made dinner difficult by going on a low carb diet and lost 80 pounds 4 year ago. He isn't strict on the carbs anymore, but has kept the weight mostly off and is pickier at eating than before. A year or so ago he decided to give up eating mammals. I generally agree on that on because I like red meat infrequently and I am not a fan of pork, ham or veal. But the kids and my parents have not given up mammals and I can't really see how or why I would make them.

I cook because I like to cook. My mom doesn't like to cook, but does in a pinch. My dad doesn't cook--but he is tired of chicken, which I will admit we eat a lot of. And my husband gets home too late to cook.

It is almost impossible to make one meal that pleases everyone. I have settled for making shared side dishes and 2 meats, most nights. Or keeping the beef to the side and making tofu as well. On the bright side, we (the 5 of us, plus the sleeping infant, plus my husband as often as he makes it home around dinner time) eat together every night. We eat at one table, with no TV. We eat different things and that's usually OK. And I feel like a million bucks when I happen to hit the trifecta of everyone home, eating 1 meal, and no whining.

[Mogget]

Wow, lots of good advice, and it's nice to see that I'm not alone in the "this is what's for dinner, eat it, or go hungry" camp. My son has had eating issues since he started eating food (I think he would still be nursing to the exclusion of all other food, if he could...). I think I need to go check out the author mentioned up thread.

[P&P]

I can't speak to medical conditions, but whatever you do, don't let this turn into World War Three and don't cave in, either.

The biggest thing is to make sure you put foods YOU like into rotation. Sure, still have "burrito night," but make sure they understand that YOU have a say in what goes on the table as well (but you might make smaller portions for them and be prepared for a big breakfast in the morning).

I know this is infuriating, especially if you're traveling or even at a friend's house but it's important to hold your ground with some flexibility.

I'm also reluctant to allow older kids to make themselves a peanut butter sandwich or something else to their liking. It can create big problems later in life. I have a friend who's over 40 and still only eats hot dogs and turkey sandwiches. She ain't exactly someone you invite to a dinner party, ya know?

Would she have turned out this way regardless of her childhood eating habits? Perhaps, but by allowing her to fix whatever she wanted set her up for some real problems later in life.

Food is such a huge part of our culture that by not "training" kids to eat different foods, you're setting them up for some social problems that are potentially huge.

[Tzipporah]

Wow. I guess I'm glad the toddler is an eater.

We've always just made whatever we wanted and let him choose whether to eat it (or what parts to eat). We don't offer alternatives at the table, but if he doesn't eat much and is hungry later, we let him have a string cheese or something.

Surprisingly, he seems just as fond of slow-cooked Moroccan chicken as he is of Mac-and-cheese.

My favorite is when he asks for a taste of something spicy, like my hot and sweet mustard, and then says "OW! ... hugs!... more owie sauce, please." Little freakin' masochist, I guess.