askyermom

First off: don’t panic. This many not even be a problem.

Are your picky eaters children? If they aren’t children, it really isn’t your problem, so just carry on with your carrots and let them be.

We will assume when you say you have a picky eater you mean to say that your child is refusing to eat several kinds of food. This also is not necessarily a problem. It’s inconvenient and even worrying, but it may not be a problem that requires a big response from you.

In my experience, all children will refuse something from time to time. Feeding a baby, you will inevitably have the moment when a spoonful of yam collides with a cheek. This is usually a pre-verbal no thank you. They have had enough of whatever you are dishing up.

Do you insist they take one more bite? Why? Do you respect their preference to leave a little blotch of goo behind? These are the things that may set the foundation for food fights, but they don’t have to start anything painful.

The first rule of feeding kids is Do No Harm, just like you are a food doctor. Meals should not be fueled with drama, just fueled with food. If you have a selection of healthy food available, guess what they will eat when they are hungry? They will either eat that healthy food or the Twinkies you didn’t know about.

You have a lot of power as the shopper, especially when they are too young to provision their own secret Twinkie locker. You decide how often cookies are in the cookie jar and when the jar is deployed.

Your control as the purveyor of nutrition is always more limited than you think, however. I just found a candy wrapper in my blankets that was deposited by Tofu the dog. Tofu doesn’t shop, he doesn’t even have pockets, but somehow he scored Halloween candy (that I did not buy) and left the evidence as a confession.

Kids will do this too, and sometimes your clue will simply be a lot of missing spoons. Those spoons are somewhere nearby, and they likely still have peanut butter on them. If you are lucky, they won’t get carried off by a family of mice.

You may feel that your kid’s allergies or other problems give you drama license when it comes to picky eating or random grazing, but I would urge you to get an even stronger grip on those impulses. The allergic or sensitive kids need even clearer understanding than the average child when it comes to food choices. They need your facts, not your heart attacks.

In pursuit of regular, healthy menus, vegetable pushing is not necessary. Most kids shun some vegetables, unless those kids are very hungry. The flavors can be too strong for their fresh taste buds and vegetables can be difficult to prepare in tantalizing ways. The most routine and thoughtless blorch of macaroni and cheese will get raves while your perfect baby green beans get cold and lonely.

Your job is simply to avoid taking any of this personally. Even chefs get the shaft from kids who refuse perfectly prepared potato poutine.

Some kids refuse food just because they are not growing at the moment. Sometimes they have developed a distaste for the color or texture. If they never again eat a green food, they will survive, so just relax. You may have retired to Belize before they rediscover the importance of green vegetables, but it’ll be okay.

All the good stuff in green vegetables is available in other foods. I’d be a little worried if their palette is limited to only white foods, but people have lived on mostly potatoes before. Starvation takes a long time while you’re eating, and all that time provides a lot of chances to realize you need to mix it up a bit.

Older people wander around muttering about fiber for a reason, and it’s not because it’s so tasty. Even on a pretty lopsided diet, your kid will stick around long enough to long for prunes and to boss other people around about food.

I have found it very helpful to keep their position in mind: kids have very little control over what goes on. We forget how weird it is to be a kid. How can you simultaneously have zero responsibility for things but still have the ability to ruin someone’s day with a sharpie and two minutes alone?

Saying no to a potato might be important to a little spud. They have worn the shoes you put them in and have tolerated all the things out of their reach for an entire day. Maybe they need to say no without it being taken as an attack on farming or harvests everywhere or starving children in the land beyond potatoes.

If they are of speaking age, ask them to describe what they don’t like about the food they’re refusing. Their reason might be insane, but it is not up to you to decide that, just ask. Maybe they don’t want the yellow squash because the green squash will be jealous, or the tomato touched it or it’s covering the part of the plate they don’t care to see.

From the earliest age possible, remind them that trying new things is fun. This may present a challenge for you if you are a boring food mom like me. It may be a stretch to shop with variety in mind or figure out what to do with a novel vegetable. Maybe you don’t have the budget to experiment, but almost anyone can try a new bean once in a while.

If they have fanatically favorite foods that you are keeping on a small rotation, keep putting new things in the mix for them to try and remember that time is on your side. Favorites get boring and stale.

Flexibility is your friend, also. Don’t give in to dramatic pleas and picketing and keep offering a variety of foods without pressure. You can keep their favorites coming, but be careful. Once you make a ritual of having a smiley-face pancake every morning you will be courting additional disaster if the power goes out or you run out of whatever ingredients go into your pancakes.

We all learn pretty quickly that food can be dangerous and exciting. Our need for it is intense and even vital, our opinions about it can be passionate and freighted with trauma. As the designated grown-up, your mission is to bring the chill energy to the showdown by refusing to make it a food fight.

Just like you don’t stock up a bird feeder and then sit there and critique their habits saying, “Look at those little bastards avoiding the millet!” You instead go about your business and try a different variety from time to time.

If you accept a no thank you from your kids without a bunch of bonkers energy, it will be better for their relationship with food and their trust in you.

Love,
yermom

My new book, Don’t Eat Your Children, it is available everywhere online to mail order hard back. Let me know what you think!! It’s up on goodreads and everything!! If you don’t want to pay US$33 with all the fees, sign up for my newsletter for a chance at a freebie!! If you subscribe via substack (also free!! or paid if you can afford it!!) you will double your odds of a freebie!! November’s free book winner is not random, he’s my dad. ❤