The Finicky Files – It’s Not Just My Kids

While far too often it feels like I am on a deserted island, surrounded by only my picky eaters, I have come to the realization that I am not alone. Far from it. And so I am happy to present the first in what will hopefully be an occasional series of guest authors for the Finicky Files. There is no better person to kick this off than my dear high school friend Terri. Take it away, Terri!

Terri: I was definitely one of those parents who swore that my kid would never eat a chicken nugget, and that I would not be a short-order cook making separate meals for my child. Since I am an unabashed foodie who savors all kinds of cuisines and loves vegetables, I was convinced I would get a good eater. I was wrong.

Unlike many picky kids, my daughter’s eating challenges didn’t start at age two. No, Caroline was a good little eater right up until about nine or 10 months of age. Around then her stubbornness became apparent when she was resistant to self-feeding her little Cheerios and puffs. Instead, she’d sit there like a baby bird, waiting for me to pop the treats into her mouth. Around the same time she decided (and I agreed) that those chunky baby foods were a no-go, but to my distress, absolutely refused any of the “table foods” that we offered her. Desperate, I turned to books like Child of Mine, and found nothing that would help me (the book at one point suggested “your child will insist on feeding herself to assert her independence.” No, just the opposite!)

A year and a half later, Caroline was subsisting on applesauce and crackers and the occasional chicken nugget. Yet she was off the charts for height and weight. My husband and I suspected she was sneaking out to 7-11 at night for Twinkies. But still, something had to be done. Concerned with some other developmental issues and her extreme sensitivity to certain noises and textures (and reading, on the recommendation of a friend, the excellent book The Out of Sync Child) we had her evaluated around age two and referred to an occupational therapist.

This made a huge difference in our lives. We found that Caroline had some oral-motor delays that were making it harder for her to chew food, so we got to work remedying those. Soon her repertoire of foods expanded to apple slices, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, yogurt, and a few other things. She became much more well-adjusted, and her development caught up with her peers. But not all her challenges were developmental. Some were purely, as the therapist put it, “behavioral.” Meaning, “you just need to crack down and teach your kid how to eat.”

I had clung to the belief that bribery was a bad idea, and that bribing my daughter with one food to eat another would result in a closet cookie addict. But with the help of the therapist I learned that bribery is not always the end of the world, and that done properly can be quite an effective strategy! For example, we started doing a lot of “tit for tat” in our daily play…if Caroline wanted to play a certain game, I would suggest that first we do some coloring, then we play the game. This got her more used to a world where she does not just get to demand things all day long, and to understand that sometimes mommy chooses and sometimes Caroline chooses. And bribery at the dinner table was not limited to extravagent offers of dessert. A variety of foods would be put out for her, with the least desirable ones on her plate and the more appealing ones out of reach. Sometimes I am bribing her with celery to eat her apples, if it’s celery she wants that day. Or she will eat all her rice and ask for more, but has learned that she needs to take bites of the other foods on her plate to get more of the desired item. Of course, bribing with sweets is also amazingly effective, but a strategy we use sparingly, simply because we don’t keep a lot of sweets in the house.

I also learned that getting tough on snacks and milk during the day was critical. My kid will eat a lot more when she’s hungry, amazingly enough. And I got better at the strategy of putting her meal in front of her, remaining calm while she protested, and sending her to bed with two bites in her little tummy if that’s all she ate.

Caroline’s eating improvement came and went in waves. One day at a party she took a bite of a spring roll, and I nearly fainted – then immediately got the recipe from the party hostess. For quite a while she ate my replica spring rolls – and they were loaded with veggies! Not long after the spring roll success I made Caroline’s Miracle Meatloaf (the name says it all), which she ate with gusto.

Yet despite these successes, she would still go off these things for weeks at a time. And she still refused all forms of cheese, pasta, pizza, any soup, all vegetables except celery (and it had to have peanut butter on it), all fruits except apples and bananas, and any foods that looked too “mixed together” like lasagna, hamburgers, or pasta dishes. Anything with visible flecks of spices or pepper was refused, and all foods were carefully inspected – there was no sneaking anything by this child. All those reliable kid foods were out! Dining out or eating at parties or friends’ houses was downright embarrassing. I hated saying in front of my sweet girl, “oh, she’s a picky eater” – after all, don’t kids internalize those messages?

I tried everything. A fellow mom would tell me that her child only ate food he could dip. After maybe a year of trying I finally got her interested in ketchup, thank goodness…but it took a year! I made food into cute shapes, bribed with anything and everything, you name it. But Caroline is stubborn – more stubborn than her own mom, perhaps.
I found that sometimes breakthroughs came after long periods of food boredom for her, such as vacations. Vacations were challenging because I was forced to work with restaurant kids’ menus and convenience store products, leaving her to eat French fries, chicken nuggets, and crackers for days on end. At the time she would enjoy it. But when we got home, and mom got back in the routine of putting unfamiliar things on her plate and remaining impassive despite all protest, more foods were accepted.

We just had another amazing breakthrough (she’s three and a half now) after a long vacation and a huge meltdown (half an hour of screaming about a grilled cheese.) Suddenly, in the space of a few days, this child has sampled chicken sausage, pasta, stir-fried beef, bacon, eggs, pancakes (previously only waffles met with her approval), and eaten more grilled cheese without comment. I’m hoping to move on to more fruits and vegetables soon. I’m not sure if this will be The Big Turnaround, or if she’ll go back to her refusing ways. I hope soon it’s all a distant memory and I can share my fine cheeses and other gourmet pleasures with her.”

Related Posts

• The Finicky Files – Truth is Stronger than Fiction
• The Finicky Files – Diabetes…
• The Finicky Files – Snacktime Smackdown
• The Finicky Files – If she makes it, will she eat?
• The Finicky Files – Date with a Dietitian
• The Finicky Files – How evil is it to let your kid go to bed hungry?
• The Finicky Files Flip Open
• Help with Dinner for even the Craziest Schedules
• Back to School Lunches
• Family Pizza Night…for under $5

© 2009 Mai Recipes