My son is afraid of new food!
February 1st, 2010 by Chris, Audience Marketing, Sunnyvale
To say that my 6-year-old son, Dylan, is a creature of habit is an understatement. He will happily eat the same food every day, go to sushi only on Fridays (because that’s what we did the first time we went), will watch the same movie 15 times over, and have the same book read to him every night for weeks. It takes a drawn out battle to get him to try something new. But the worst is the food. He politely refuses just about every new food we present to him – even pizza!
I am grateful that Dylan does eat from the 4 food groups but his range is very limited – pasta and couscous, green beans and sugar snap peas, cheese, tofu, almonds, and oranges – those are the staples. Ever so often Bill and I talk about instituting some tough love in the form of presenting him with the same food every meal until he tries it, but we never seem to be able to stick to it. It’s particularly galling to me because I love food and I assumed I’d raise my child so that he would be happily chowing down on Korean, French, German, and Thai food by now. Instead, I am a short order cook, making one meal for Bill and me and another one for Dylan, something I swore I’d never do!
Tonight’s dinner is typical. I am making baked penne pasta with tomato sauce, cheese, peas, and roasted sweet potatoes and leeks. Yum! Dylan is having the deconstructed version – plain pasta with olive oil, cheese, and green beans—all neatly separated from each other.
I know that I could halt the madness but it’s hard to battle every night. And I have to say that I read two articles that made me feel a little better about short ordering for my son.
The first was an article I read in the NY Times about a 2007 research study on children’s eating habits. It turns out that there truly are some children who are fearful of new foods! Researchers studied the eating habits of 5,390 pairs of twins (aged 8-11 years) and found that their reluctance to try new foods are mostly inherited. According to the report, 78 percent is genetic and the other 22 percent environmental. Reading this, I felt a huge sigh of relief, thinking, it’s not my fault!
The 2nd article was also from the NY Times, 6 Food Mistakes Parents Make. It had some great tips about not forcing your kid or bribing him/her to eat a food. But it does emphasize the need to reintroduce the same food over and over again.
And so, I continue to make simple meals for Dylan, but we are slowly introducing him to new foods. If you have any kid-friendly recipes, I’d love to hear about them! Thanks!
February 1st, 2010 by Chris, Audience Marketing, Sunnyvale
rss
twitter
My son had a fear of new foods from the age of 2 to 13. All he ate were bread and dairy products. Thats it. It definitely was a fear of putting any new taste or texture into his mouth. We could never get him to take medicines orally either. At 13 we took him to a psychologist who got him to eat new foods by actually going with him to local restaurants. He slowly added new food into his diet throughout his teens. Once he went away to college, and ate all his meals with others, he began eating everything.
Ahhh… I feel some relief to read the very same behavior in other children. My almost 4 year old is the very same way, even with a favorite movie, but food is the toughest challenge. I also swore I wouldn’t be a short order cook, but here I end up fixing her a separate meal most of the time. Stubborn… I tried the iron hand four nights in a row by serving her exactly what me and my husband were eating, plus one thing I know she likes, on the plate. No luck – a war of wills. She’ll go to bed hungry before she’ll try that “new thing”. We’ve tried basic psychology. We show her that we eat it, and love it, and I’ve even tried to get her to look me in the eye and talk about WHY she is afraid of ANY food at all. She gets very nervous and intentionally wanders off to change the subject. It’s incredibly perplexing to me.
Do count your blessings though… Dylan seems to have healthy tastes if he’s willing to eat pasta and couscous, green beans and sugar snap peas, cheese, tofu, almonds, and oranges. That’s not too bad. I’ve got a peanut butter lover.
I do puree many “almost tasteless” veggies and slip them into her muffin mix and pancake mix, along with flax seed meal, like The Sneaky Chef… but boy, this on top of short order meals for her is draining.
I’ll shoot for more patience, but I’m considering a therapist. Thanks for the links to those articles!
My nightly reading lately has consisted of Sneaky Chef recipes. With an 18 month old who survives on eggs, toast, tofu and strawberries I hardly have anything to sneak the good stuff into!
Jeanne & Angela – You both mentioned the Sneaky Chef so of course I had to check it out. Thanks for the tip — I like the idea of sneaking in tasteless veggies into muffins. I do have to say that it’s reassuring to know that other moms are battling some of the same issues.
And I do think some of this is a battle of wills — Dylan’s a creature of habit and just likes what he’s used to and doesn’t want to try new things. But now we have a new battle (ok, does that sound negative?) — he’s taken to waking up at 5:30am and wants us to cover him back up, pull his covers off, check his “injury”, take him to go pee, the list goes on. It culminated the other night with him deliberately peeing in the bed. We left him there b/c it wasn’t an emergency and got him out when it was “morning” — 6:30am. He doesn’t use that reason anymore but it continues! Wish me luck that he sleeps through the night tonight!