word-nerds-united
Please don’t make your kids eat foods they hate
There’s a way to make sure your kid has a healthy, balanced diet without making them eat foods they hate. If they can’t do the texture of broccoli, do soy or citrus for the same vitamins. “Eat your vegetables” shouldn’t mean choke down the mushy peas that set their teeth on edge. This is a teaching opportunity: “Just because you can’t do this thing doesn’t mean you’re bad, it just means we have to figure out a different way to do it so you’re capable and healthy.”
that is such a great way to put it
My mom always had the “no-thank-you bite” rule if it was a new food that we were unsure about. One bite, that’s all we needed. And if it ended up being something we hated, she’d get us to try it again a couple months later, and if we still didn’t like it, we didn’t have to eat it again. I still can’t eat fish, rice, hamburgers, coconut, or eggs, so if she makes a meal including one of those, she’ll cook something similar but slightly different for me (chicken instead of fish, turkey burgers instead of hamburgers, noodles instead of rice, etc.). It’s saved me a lot of horror with food and given me a much healthier relationship with eating new things.
good parenting
Yeah, forcing kids to eat foods is actually a bona-fide way to give them issues further down the line. They start to have negative experiences with foods and will start to refuse to try new things. The no-thank-you bite rule is absolutely amazing. I have also seen it as the three-bite rule.
i hear time and again from people whose parents forced them to eat foods they hated, only to find out years later about an undiagnosed allergy or sensory issues. (e.g. my autism was undiagnosed, and for years my food issues were dismissed as being a “picky eater”)
if a food causes a child distress, there’s zero reason to coerce them to eat it. whether or not it’s a medical issue, it still sets them up to have dysfunctional relationships with food down the line
I had like, a word association thing where if I knew there was an ingredient I’d THINK would taste gross I wouldn’t eat it so my mom stopped telling me what was in the new food I was eating (I have no food allergies and this started in high school) and I started eating way more foods than I thought I’d ever. Now I’ve adopted it myself where I’ll try any new food but I refuse to know what’s in it until I’ve tasted it. That’s how I ended up eating fish eggs, which I know I’d never have eaten had I known beforehand.
Very much a method that doesn’t work for most people, but I figured I’d share anyways. Definitly something you’d start with someone older.
I really don’t do well with unexpected textures. For instance: a crunchy bit in pudding, gristle in basically anything, exceedingly mushy veggies. This caused problems with eating some things because my dad would scold me for not finishing my food even if it was something I liked. I could eat half of a burger and hit a weird hard bit and then have to stop eating it because I would gag otherwise. Eventually I trained myself to muscle through but not everyone is lucky enough to do that…
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