Bad Parent: Let Them Eat Nuggets
My kids are picky eaters, and I'm okay with that.
by Amy S.F. Lutz
January 31, 2008
And we felt their influence immediately. Our refrigerator
was suddenly stocked with organic milk, yogurt and eggs. We joined a farm
cooperative in search of the best locally grown produce. We also started
sitting down to dinner as a family. We gathered around the dining room table
for braised oxtails, coq au vin, leg of lamb — and the fights I had so
desperately tried to avoid. We read somewhere that children need to try new
foods an average of nineteen times before they accept them, so we instituted a
new rule: the kids had to take at least one taste of everything on their plates.
One bite! It didn't seem that draconian to us. But every night there were
tears: "I've had broccoli a million times, I already know I hate it!" "That smells
disgusting!" "How big a bite?" "If I take a bite, can I have something else?" I
freely admit that my six-year-old daughter, Erika, was often the instigator in
these confrontations, but none of the kids — not even my culinarily
advantaged nephews — embraced the risotto or the roasted parsnips. In the
end, it always seemed to come down to a negotiation (okay, a bribe) for
dessert.
That was eighteen months ago. Although we never sat down and
explicitly talked about it, things have changed since then. Now, when Matt
makes shortribs and noodles, the kids have noodles and hot dogs. Raw carrots,
celery and peppers — which the kids vastly prefer to cooked vegetables
— are featured frequently on the menu. And our dinners are much more
peaceful as a result. I know Keri has relaxed her standards with some
reluctance, assuming her sons' palates would be greatly expanded were it not
for their cousins' influence, but I'm not so sure. A recent article in The New
York Times on picky eaters confirmed that children as a group are pickiest
between the ages of two and five, and further explained that this phenomenon
has its roots in evolutionary biology, as a defense mechanism to protect
increasingly mobile toddlers from ingesting the countless new and potentially
hazardous substances they encounter over the course of their daily
explorations. And this makes sense to me.
We gathered around the dining room table
for braised oxtails, coq au vin, leg of lamb — and fights.
After all, I know many kids who
eat only chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese. But I don't know one adult
who does.
Not that we've completely given up. We still have our family
dinners, and we set a positive example every day by exclaiming over the curried
cauliflower, the turkey pot pie, and the vegetable stir fry that Matt and Keri
prepare. We invite the kids to help in cooking projects of all kinds, from
mixing pancake batter to shaping challah. Given how much effort and pleasure
goes into the preparation and consumption of food in our house, I think —
I hope it will be impossible for the kids to maintain their
resistance for long.
©2008 Amy S.F. Lutz and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Amy S.F. Lutz's work has appeared in dozens of
literary journals, including Cream City Review, The American
Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, and Mid-American Review. She and
her husband have five children. She and her sister chronicle their two-family household in the blog whoelsewantstoliveinmyhouse.com |
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