I love this! So interesting to hear how you thought about the different foods. I loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a kid until one day when my sandwich got smushed --then for years the very smell of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was nauseating to me. Girls in this country have so much shame about eating. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for this. My son was so picky as a child. His mother and I didn’t know what to do about him. Finding food that a picky kid will eat is like discovering a “spark bird” when embarking on a passion for birding. The spark food for our son turned out to be lo mein noodles. Once we discovered that, we branched out from there into a similar taxonomy of foods. He’s still picky but not malnourished 😝
Lo mein!! What a great spark food. It’s so hard for parents in these scenarios. My sister has struggled with her daughter in past years and I advised her to just make a plate of a few options and let her make the decision of what to eat. She said it really helped. There can be so much pressure when it comes to consumption, I think allowing some autonomy is really important.
What a fraught topic! Both of my sons were “picky eaters” early on. So I dove into showing them how much I loved food—cooking it, trying new ones, savoring old favorites. The message was “I love this!” not “you should eat this!” The breakthrough came at Brother Jimmy’s BBQ on the upper east side of nyc. I was digging into a nest of shoestring fries and dipping them into barbecue sauce, and the penny dropped. “Oh! Food is fun!” Or, it can be, if stripped of all teasing and shaming. Nobody deserves that, or mandatory “food heritage” day.
food is definitely a fraught topic, but shoestring fries at a bbq sound fabulous right now. I think it can be very difficult as a parent where you're in the position of trying to get nutrients into your child's body and they're refusing. At a certain point you're just desperate!
I love this! So interesting to hear how you thought about the different foods. I loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a kid until one day when my sandwich got smushed --then for years the very smell of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was nauseating to me. Girls in this country have so much shame about eating. Thank you for sharing!
The smashing is so devastating …
Thank you for this. My son was so picky as a child. His mother and I didn’t know what to do about him. Finding food that a picky kid will eat is like discovering a “spark bird” when embarking on a passion for birding. The spark food for our son turned out to be lo mein noodles. Once we discovered that, we branched out from there into a similar taxonomy of foods. He’s still picky but not malnourished 😝
Lo mein!! What a great spark food. It’s so hard for parents in these scenarios. My sister has struggled with her daughter in past years and I advised her to just make a plate of a few options and let her make the decision of what to eat. She said it really helped. There can be so much pressure when it comes to consumption, I think allowing some autonomy is really important.
I received my copy yesterday. Can’t wait to snack on it!
What a fraught topic! Both of my sons were “picky eaters” early on. So I dove into showing them how much I loved food—cooking it, trying new ones, savoring old favorites. The message was “I love this!” not “you should eat this!” The breakthrough came at Brother Jimmy’s BBQ on the upper east side of nyc. I was digging into a nest of shoestring fries and dipping them into barbecue sauce, and the penny dropped. “Oh! Food is fun!” Or, it can be, if stripped of all teasing and shaming. Nobody deserves that, or mandatory “food heritage” day.
food is definitely a fraught topic, but shoestring fries at a bbq sound fabulous right now. I think it can be very difficult as a parent where you're in the position of trying to get nutrients into your child's body and they're refusing. At a certain point you're just desperate!