One of the major issues that parents struggle with is food. Why, living in a time and place of plenty, is food such a struggle?
Food choices often relate to family harmony, neurodiversity, gender, relationships with grandparents, health…
In other words, food is related to everything in a way that few other aspects of human lives are. That’s why I wrote the book Food for Humans: The history, science, and culture of what we eat. I wrote the text for my course at Athena’s, Yum! (I am currently seeking a publisher for the book but students who enroll get to read it in class.) The study of food is fascinating! It relates to culture, history, science, nutrition, ethics, and tradition.
I really love teaching this class because it’s one of the times I see “aha moments” just popping and sparking from my students. So often, even if they love to eat, they’ve never even thought about food. They have no idea what the difference is between fat and oil, why British people eat from forks but Thai people eat from spoons, or where potatoes are from. Many of my students have eating issues: allergies or sensitivities, aversions, unhealthy obsessive eating. As they learn more about food, they learn more about themselves.
But long before I started writing about food, I was a dedicated foodie pregnant with my first child…
Trying to be the Perfect Mom from a hospital bed
My first attempt at forestalling pickiness was when I had just given birth. I had read that sometimes American kids reject breast milk after the mom has had a particularly flavorful meal. My husband’s response? Get me Thai takeout while my milk was coming in! When our first child was a baby we’d grind up whatever we were eating and feed it to him—regardless of how spicy or unusual. [Read about how we came to this approach.]
Our older child had a few dislikes, but that was OK in our house. (We parents have a few of our own.) Mostly, he came to love good food, and being a freshman at UC was a torturous experience for him.
And then along comes that picky eater.
Like many neurodivergent children, our younger child’s eating habits were…rather unusual. That’s when we as a family had to get out the big guns. We were tryers! We went to every grocery or restaurant offering unusual cuisine that we could find.
Did it work? Well… yes and no. He definitely developed a wider palate than most picky eaters. Since most parents, faced with a picky eater, don’t try to get them to eat unusual things, they probably wouldn’t have introduced their kids to some of my kid’s favorites: squid, smoked fish, and pickles! He went from being a picky, mac’n’cheese sort to semi-adventurous—within limits.
All grown up
It wasn’t always easy, but now both of my young adults are adventurous, (usually) healthy eaters. We had lots of unexpected twists and turns along the way. Both kids had times when eating was difficult for one reason or another. And it turned out that we have found ourselves on a completely unexpected eating path because of food allergies that were un/misdiagnosed for years.
The most satisfying part of our food life now is that our kids love to cook wonderful food for us! When you spend so many years nurturing young bodies, it’s such a treat to get to sit down with a glass of wine and wait for a new, unexpected dish to be placed in front of you.
Keys to raising healthy, adventurous eaters:
I can’t tell you how to deal with your specific issues, but I think there are two ideas to keep in mind as you raise your children.
- Encourage a healthy love of a wide variety of food by modeling. We parents sometimes have to confront our own issues first in this area. It’s important for us to model the eating we want to see in our kids. For example, if you don’t tend to eat raw veggies, try to start. If you won’t give up sugar, don’t ask your kid to.
- Foster a family food culture of adventure and inquiry. Don’t make any assumptions about your “picky” kid because you never know what they’ll end up loving. (For a while, the only protein ours loved was squid!)
- Seek and share information about food that connects with your child’s other interests. Got a budding scientist? Food science is fascinating. A geography buff? Find out what people eat in different countries. A social justice warrior? Food relates to everything!
- Include your child in growing, buying, and cooking food. So many parents decide that it’s too much trouble have kids in the kitchen, but all the trouble pays off. Teach them the basics that you know, and ask them to join you in inquiry-based learning about foods that you haven’t cooked before.
Of course, children with eating issues will not necessarily turn into gourmets overnight, but wherever you’re starting from, you can make headway and raise a child who is more open to eating and enjoying food than they were at the start.
