As parents our most important job is to develop mentally strong, emotionally strong and physically strong people for the future. Not that we are trying to create super humans, but lets face it, we all know that it would have helped us to be stronger in all of those ways just to make it through high school.
We all want our child to be the next Einstein, Shakespeare, Mozart or Picasso. We have hopes that our children have the abilities to be everything we want for them and that they will want for themselves.
So it sometimes comes as a shock to us that unfortunately like us, our children come with flaws. Sometimes those flaws are the exact flaws we see in our own mirror and unfortunately those are the hardest flaws to help them with. Because not only are you faced with your own flaws but everything seems larger when it is your child.
Some people see a picky eater as a stubborn, spoiled child who should just be made to sit at the table until the dish is clean, no exceptions. Well it sounds good in theory, but speaking as the child who was forced to sit there for hours and only learned the art of getting rid of food more creatively. I can say, it doesn’t always work that way, nor should it. I admit, it would have been easier on my parents if I would have just eaten the piece of juicy steak they had so lovingly made me, but I couldn’t get past the fact that my food was viably bleeding, nor could I get past the texture and the chewy nature of it, so I found ways to hide it. In toy play sets, buried in yesterday’s trash, in my cup that I could just dump down the sink while doing the dishes.
In theory all kids are easily handled, but lets face it, kids aren’t all the same and they will not all be handled the same. So, I was blessed with a child with the same dislike for food that I have. As an adult, I can vocalize and say the reason I didn’t like that steak was because it was rare, for me it needs to be well done to the point of burned. But as a parent it is our responsibility to realize that our children can’t always explain things so clearly. So some people think I should leave my picky eater at the table until she eats and tell her that we are having such and such for dinner and if you don’t like it you don’t have to eat. All that would do for my daughter is get her out of her most stressful environment (forced food) and lead her on a road to an eating disorder.
There are some ways that I have found that make meals a little easier.
1. Forget the meal with everything you had on your plate as a child. If your child is on a kick of only eating peanut butter sandwiches, let them have sandwiches. It’s a cheap meal and at least their eating something, which they might not do if you had your steak dinner.
2. Encourage your child to try new things, but let them know if they don’t like it, then they need to get their own dinner. In the last year, my daughter has walked away from the table to make herself a bowl of cereal on several occasions. But she’s eating and we’re not fighting about it.
3. Talk to your child about eating disorders. I have an eleven year old daughter, she is currently underweight, at this point in her life though she isn’t trying to be anorexic, and so I talk to her about the path she’s on and the consequences of that path. When we have that conversation she gets up and looks for something to eat. She doesn’t want that. In a few years maybe she would, but talk early and talk often about what is going on with their eating habits.
4. The most important thing is to make sure your child is eating have stuff they like in the house.
If you have a picky eater it is important to realize that it isn’t a choice. As an adult I am still faced with food issues that people can’t believe, it’s the texture, the smell, the look. It isn’t a choice I make and there is nothing I can do to change it. I know I passed this onto my daughter and I know it is my responsibility to help her handle it better than I knew how.
