Hey, there! I see you, locked in your bathroom. It’s dinnertime, and you’ve just thrown yet another temper tantrum in front of your family, hurling silverware, flinging broccoli, and shot-putting your homemade meatloaf in the trash because your picky eaters refused to eat the meal you worked so hard to make. I get it because I’ve been there.
You see, I, too, had picky eaters in my home and they drove me to many a dinnertime conniption fit—outbursts that I feel certain will be recounted when my kids are grown and in therapy. But, there’s good news. Those days are (mostly) behind me, and I’m here today to tell you that it gets better. Promise.
Let me give you a bit of a backstory. Long before I had kids of my own, I engaged in much exaggerated side-eyeing and smack-talking about picky eaters and the parents who were (clearly) contributing to the issue. You see, back before I had children of my own, in my not-so-humble opinion, picky eaters were a product of poor parenting.
Mic drop.
But then something interesting happened. I had my own kids, and these kids of mine were horribly, ridiculously, embarrassingly picky eaters.
The picky eating started pretty much from the beginning. In fact, I vividly remember getting the all-clear from the pediatrician to begin trying solid foods with my firstborn baby daughter. I was so excited and went directly from the pediatrician’s office to the farmer’s market, where I lovingly purchased the most organic and humble yellow squash available. I brought this beautiful squash home and carefully boiled, strained, mashed, and food-processed it into submission, then let it cool until it was the perfect temperature.
Interestingly enough, as soon as the spoonful of mashed squash touched her lips, she gagged. I’m not talking about a small gag; I’m talking about a full-blown, purple-faced, suffocating, stomach retching, tongue protruding, violent gag. It was horrendous. She immediately dissolved into an intense crying fit, as did I. After it was all said and done, and each attempt to feed her the squash failed miserably, I dumped my lovingly crafted mashed squash into the trash and began to question my long-held beliefs about picky eaters and bad parenting. Surely I hadn’t already screwed up?
As the years went by, my daughter’s eating preferences stayed extremely banal and annoyingly difficult. I wrung my hands over her lack of vegetable consumption and tried my darndest not to make her an alternate meal at dinnertime, but often my irrational fear of her starving won out and I’d whip up something that I knew she’d eat. I spent so many years crying at dinnertime because the power struggle of raising picky eaters was too much. And, looking back on it, that’s all it really was: a power struggle.
I wish that I had a magical, overnight solution for dealing with your picky eaters, and I also really wish that I had a life-changing recipe to share that is the perfect mix of kid-friendly, healthy, easy, Keto, carb-free, free-range, humanely sourced, affordable, AND made using ingredients that you already have in your kitchen (anyone?). I do not. But, I can tell you that it gets better. Maybe not tomorrow, and perhaps not even next year, but it will get better when you least expect it.
I had this epiphany over the summer while on vacation with my now 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son: my “picky eaters” aren’t that picky anymore. They readily try new things and order off of menus without having to make bizarre, special requests. As I sat and watched my children devour meal after meal on our vacation this summer, it dawned upon me that, in our dinnertime power struggle, we’d finally declared a ceasefire.
If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t stress out as much about what my kids were and weren’t eating, because that surely contributed to the power struggle. This is not to say that a Happy Meal every day is the solution, but a few meals here and there that are a bust and end in disaster aren’t going to hurt anyone. And more good news: there’s a decent chance that your children won’t develop scurvy from a few days of poor eating. #winning
If you can find a reasonably healthy meal that they’ll willingly eat, don’t be afraid to serve that meal multiple times a week (or day!). My mistake was that I got really caught up in trying to keep our meal planning interesting and diverse, when I should’ve just loosened up a bit and gone with what worked.
And, while your kids might never fully embrace the foods that you’d like for them to embrace (my daughter still doesn’t like squash), as they get older they’ll grow confident in trying new things more often. They’ll spend the night with a friend and come home extolling the wonders of some basic meal that you tried to feed them at home multiple times. They’ll see other kids bringing hummus in their lunches at school and decide that hummus is their new favorite food too.
It’ll happen, moms and dads—slowly but surely—and before you know it, you’ll sit back and realize that your kids are growing, thriving, and prospering even in spite of their eating preferences.
