"Considerate without catering" where is the line?

[Anonymous]

If you follow Ellyn Satter's guidelines for feeding your picky kids, or a similar plan where you serve one meal to everyone, but also incorporate at least one thing that everyone will eat, where's your dividing line between "considerate" and "catering"?

[Anonymous]

Catering is responding to requests for specific foods. I don't like this chicken. I want nuggets. Considerate is leaving the plum sauce off some of the chicken and allowing a dip in ketchup

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Catering is responding to requests for specific foods. I don't like this chicken. I want nuggets. Considerate is leaving the plum sauce off some of the chicken and allowing a dip in ketchup

OP here,

I see this example a lot, and I definitely have meals where that approach works. But a lot of food isn't something where the sauce is added last, and you can just pull something out.

Part of the issue we're having is that the other adult in my household and I have very different tolerances for kids eating "unbalanced" meals. So, while I'm aiming for 1 - 2 foods they'll definitely eat at every meal, he wants a "considerate" version of every food, which to me feels like they're eating a whole different meal.

[Anonymous]

If he's cooking and he can produce two keys efficiently, that's his call, isn't it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If he's cooking and he can produce two keys efficiently, that's his call, isn't it?

I don’t know what you mean by two keys, but he does cook. When he cooks he just makes meals where every food is something the pickiest eater likes. Which is fine by me for some meals, but I don’t want every meal to be that way. I want to eat more variety, and I want the kids exposed to more variety.

[Anonymous]

It depends on the kid and the reasons behind their pickness. Some kids have much bigger hills to climb to overcome food aversions. One of my kids has ARFID and she will gag or throw up certain foods because her aversion is so strong. It is not something she's doing to be a brat -- I have watched her try to choke things down out of politeness and it's heartbreaking. It would be like if someone served you a live cockroach and then you tried to eat it so as not to be rude or cause trouble. That's what it's like for her to eat a piece of steak or an omelette.

So what I do for her I'm sure looks like catering to most people but to me it is just kindness. I know how hard she works to expand her food palate. I also know that if I don't make more of an effort for her, she simply will not eat and in fact can just lose her appetite if meals are too stressful or scary, and will start to lose weight. Trust me, you will start to "cater" really quickly if you have a kid who isn't gaining weight or growing and would rather go to bed hungry than eat even something as broadly pleasing as a grilled cheese or a slice of pizza.

This is totally different from a kid who eats a broad range of foods but sometimes acts picky with "ugh I'm tired of spaghetti" or "I can't eat this tortilla, it has too many brown marks on it." A kid like that is in the normal range of pickiness and usually will eat if you just give them food and let them know that's what is for dinner. Also it's okay to eat things that aren't your favorite and kids sometimes need to learn that.

Meanwhile, my child with ARFID almost never eats food that is her favorite and yes sometimes I give her food I know she likes with a meal even if it means making something special because I want her to have positive associations with meals and eating. She's just on a different path than most people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If he's cooking and he can produce two keys efficiently, that's his call, isn't it?

I don’t know what you mean by two keys, but he does cook. When he cooks he just makes meals where every food is something the pickiest eater likes. Which is fine by me for some meals, but I don’t want every meal to be that way. I want to eat more variety, and I want the kids exposed to more variety.

PP you're quoting, and I don't know what autocorrect turn into "two keys." Two meals, I think.

Anyway, when you cook you can go for variety, and when he cooks, you get what you get.

I made sure my kids had some sort of fruit or vegetable and some sort of protein at dinner (for the milk-drinkers, that was milk), and that was about it. They aren't all adventurous eaters now, and they don't all like the same things, but the exposure you want will happen as they get older and hang out with friends, travel, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It depends on the kid and the reasons behind their pickness. Some kids have much bigger hills to climb to overcome food aversions. One of my kids has ARFID and she will gag or throw up certain foods because her aversion is so strong. It is not something she's doing to be a brat -- I have watched her try to choke things down out of politeness and it's heartbreaking. It would be like if someone served you a live cockroach and then you tried to eat it so as not to be rude or cause trouble. That's what it's like for her to eat a piece of steak or an omelette.

So what I do for her I'm sure looks like catering to most people but to me it is just kindness. I know how hard she works to expand her food palate. I also know that if I don't make more of an effort for her, she simply will not eat and in fact can just lose her appetite if meals are too stressful or scary, and will start to lose weight. Trust me, you will start to "cater" really quickly if you have a kid who isn't gaining weight or growing and would rather go to bed hungry than eat even something as broadly pleasing as a grilled cheese or a slice of pizza.

This is totally different from a kid who eats a broad range of foods but sometimes acts picky with "ugh I'm tired of spaghetti" or "I can't eat this tortilla, it has too many brown marks on it." A kid like that is in the normal range of pickiness and usually will eat if you just give them food and let them know that's what is for dinner. Also it's okay to eat things that aren't your favorite and kids sometimes need to learn that.

Meanwhile, my child with ARFID almost never eats food that is her favorite and yes sometimes I give her food I know she likes with a meal even if it means making something special because I want her to have positive associations with meals and eating. She's just on a different path than most people.

OP here,

I'm really glad you replied! I think you would find that you and I agree on a lot about food. I have parented a kid with severe feeding issues, although not specifically ARFID, and I certainly didn't mean to imply that the "considerate without catering" model is the only one, it's just the one that seems to be working for our family in this season. I do believe, very strongly, that kids with anxiety around food, like one of the kids that inspired this, need predictability around food. So, maybe they know that mom will only serve what they can handle, or maybe they know that there is a safe option that they can always ask for, or whatever. But changing up the rules frequently, or in the middle of a meal, is just going to make mealtime scary, and as you point out that's going to decrease intake for many kids. So, I asked specifically from this perspective, because that's the framework that my kids are used to, and I wanted to problem solve within that framework, not because I think it's the only framework, or that everyone else should automatically adopt that framework. My kids are used to the Satter framework. Parents decide when kids eat. If it's a snack, kids choose what's for snack from what we have in the house. If it's a meal, adults choose what's served, being careful to make sure there's something everyone likes on the table, and then kids choose freely from those foods to make a meal that works for them. I don't cater, meaning that I won't make two different foods (e.g. roast chicken and chicken nuggets), and I don't let them have an alternative that's not on the table.

My pickiest kid is somewhere between the two versions you describe. She definitely has anxiety about food, and real sensory issues, but I don't think her anxiety interferes to the point that it does in ARFID, and I don't think her health is impacted. So not just typical kid picky (that's her sibling), but not a formal diagnosis. On the day after I wrote this, I made a new side dish that I was pretty sure she wouldn't want to try, so I paired it with a favorite protein, and I had fruit and milk on the table like I do at every meal. Her Dad would have made a "considerate" version of the side dish, but I didn't.