When did your kid-food-liking kid start becoming an adventurous eater?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adventurous from the start.

Your picky eater was adventurous from the start? That doesn't make any sense.

humble brag. Probably weren't picky eaters at all to begin with!

Being a picky eater isn't the worst things in the world. Just because your kids are adventurous eaters doesn't mean you are perfect parents or that you kids are perfect.

I wasn't a picky eater and it wasn't because my mom forced me to eat what was given. I just liked food! So to the pp don't pat yourself too hard on the back. It might bite you in the future on something else!

NP. OP did not say that her kids were picky eaters. I am lucky. My kids are not. But I do not think they ever had chicken fingers in their lives. We exposed them to a variety of foods. Some things they liked. Some things they did not. And their taste also changed as the time went on. For example, DS used to LOVE spicy food as a toddler. Now, he does not. We do not force our kids to eat anything they do not like.

[Anonymous]

I was also a super picky kid. I had no problem going to bed hungry if dinner was something I didn’t like. Can’t leave the kitchen til I clean my plate? I’d sleep there. I didn’t branch out until I was 22. I didn’t even eat salad until then. To this day I don’t eat fruit. I am a happy, healthy, slim, former D1 athlete. I survived and thrived without weird food being shoved down my throat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine flipped a switch around second grade. He’s now in third and literally just asked me to buy seaweed to replace his Doritos at snacktime.

Almost 6 year old eats about 4 things.

+same with my kid (older one). A lot of it has to do with eating more independently with friends and seeing what other kids like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never gave them a choice. Whatever was served for any meals was all there was to eat.

Yup. My 4 and 2 year olds eat everything. We also don’t snack, so they’re hungry at dinner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I never gave them a choice. Whatever was served for any meals was all there was to eat.

My son threw up every time you eat something that he was adverse to. So you’re telling me you would’ve forced your kids eat their food and throw up each meal?

Omg please that’s an extreme case and medical condition.

Most kids won’t throw up if they eat something that’s not Mac and cheese.

[Anonymous]

Here's my question: How many of you adults are super adventurous eaters? How many of you will eat whatever is put in front of you?

Sometimes you just don't feel like eating something, and it's fine. Our kids are the same way.

With my 3 year old, I'm satisfied as long as she's eating a balanced diet each day. I don't need her to be eating kale/quinoa bowls every day in order to feel like I'm a good parent. She gets something from every food group every day. Her pediatrician was satisfied when I ran through what she eats at her checkup.

[Anonymous]

My kids started appreciating good food at about 10 or 11. Before that, they ate what was in front of them it strongly preferred food that was a little bland and separate.
Like they might eat almomds and Brussels sprouts seperately at 6 years old. But at 10 years old they liked to put almonds on the Brussels sprouts and realized they were even better when toasted with a little drizzle of vinegar or honey.

[Anonymous]

LMAO this thread is really bringing out all the best parents in the universe!

OP, don't sweat it. My husband ate nothing but powdered donuts until he was 12 and now he's a very adventurous eater and doesn't wven like dessert, go figure.

My 3 year old used to eat anything I put in front of her, now she's picky. My 6 month old has gobbled up every food I've teird but I'm sure she will eventually be picky too. I don't give her options she just opts not to eat. I read that pickiness im toddlers is actually a survival mechanism because once they are old enough to wander around on their own their body prevents them from eating anything that seems questionable. So maybe our picky eaters are just biologically superior and more likely to survive a neanderthal childhood

[Anonymous]

Around 2nd grade for both kids, possibly earlier for DD. She's now in 4th and actually orders salads at restaurants, sometimes. She's also developed a pretty good tolerance for spicy food, at least for an American.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Around 2nd grade for both kids, possibly earlier for DD. She's now in 4th and actually orders salads at restaurants, sometimes. She's also developed a pretty good tolerance for spicy food, at least for an American.

Oh god I hope my 3 year old gets over her spicy food aversion soon. As a baby she would ask for hot sauce! Now she won't touch something if it has even the SLIGHTEST bit of heat in it. I am SO SICK of making bland food. My husband and I basically pour tabasco into everything I cook now to try to salvage it lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PS ... my picky eater eats calamari and grilled shrimp, but wouldn’t touch a chicken nugget or burger for love or money. She’ll eat sausage but only if it’s high end butcher or farmers market shop stuff, not the Grocery store stuff. Fancy French cheese is great—she won’t touch American cheese. So you can give fancy diverse foods and they can still be restrictive “picky” eaters!

Similar here -- she'll fight you for roasted Brussels Sprouts, gobble up black beans and rice, and happily eat veggie 'Pho' (none of these are fancy, just not typical kid food things), but balks at mac and cheese or chicken fingers. It actually makes it harder at some places.

The trick with getting her to eat something new is have her be really hungry and, in my kid's case, have enough spice/flavor without being too hot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids started appreciating good food at about 10 or 11. Before that, they ate what was in front of them it strongly preferred food that was a little bland and separate.
Like they might eat almomds and Brussels sprouts seperately at 6 years old. But at 10 years old they liked to put almonds on the Brussels sprouts and realized they were even better when toasted with a little drizzle of vinegar or honey.

This is OP. This is exactly what my kids are like -- they will eat the brussel sprouts and the almonds separately but not together and Mom, please don't put any "funny" sauces on them like balsamic. I wanted to know when flavor palates started expanding to more adventuresome tastes and taste combinations. They are 5 and 8, by the way.

These posts do tend to bring out the parents who have kids who eat everything and do so because their parents didn't feed them kid food and fed them "what we ate" from the very beginning, don't they? Yeah, so did I, and that worked when they were younger than 3, but after that they asserted more opinions. It's common.

They are not super picky -- they eat Asian flavors because we are Asian and they readily eat things like seaweed which some people seem to think is pretty out there -- but their taste drift to bland and kid-food like. Which, by the way, can be found in Asian kids too -- kid meals in Japan tend toward bland potato croquettes and karaage (the Japanese equivalent of chicken fingers) with steamed broccoli.

Interesting that some posters say it might change with puberty and just getting a bigger appetite and also with peer pressure.

[Anonymous]

I never thought I would be a parent who offers dessert after every dinner, but we sort of fell into using small after-dinner treats as an incentive to get the kids to try new foods and eat more quickly than they otherwise would. It moved us from dinners that felt like major warfare to dinners that are more of a negotiation.

I don't force the kids to eat things they don't like, except that they have to try two bites of whatever is presented that night. My eight year old has learned to politely say she doesn't care for something and leave it on her plate after trying it. My five year old protests loudly at times, but often ends up liking stuff that he swears he won't.

When they don't like something after trying it and choose to pass, they know they won't get dessert unless they eat a full meal's worth of whatever else is on the table (e.g. double servings of vegetables) or a stripped-down version of whatever was rejected (e.g., a meat with the seasonings or sauce scraped off). Pasta and other starches, without a protein and/or veggie, will not get them dessert, and they don't get the option of a separate "kids" entree.

I think the key is to make trying new things a core family value and to lower the perceived risk with a two-bite rule, so they don't get locked into entrenched ideas about what they will and won't eat.

[Anonymous]

Mine ate everything for awhile Curry, fish, highly spiced; nothing processed, organic, GF, dairy free, grass fed... blah blah blah. Now she’s 4 and HAS OPINIONS! Riding it out and picking our battles. She is a god mix of healthy and healthier kid foods, I’m ok with that for now. Eventually, she’ll realize her mom is an adventurous scratch cook I expect we’ll have a ton of fun in the kitchen together in time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not what you want to hear, OP... but we limited kid food between 0-3 so they would develop a taste for other things. No snacks except fruit and only water between meals. Start meals with vegetables, then protein, then grain. A lot of variety and little pasta, bread, etc. They were hungry so they ate everything. We also took them to a lot of ethnic restaurants early on — Mexican, Indian, Thai, middle eastern, Korean, etc. — and made a big deal about how delicious the food was. They learned to love trying new things and will eat everything we eat. I feel like it is harder when they get older because it becomes a control issue and also a psychological familiarity one. Anxiety develops between ages 3-8 so kids at those ages often don’t want to try new things. YMMV.

You clearly don't understand food aversions. Your post is nonsensical.

Nobody cares what your kids eat, do you have advise on kids that can't/won't eat certain foods, if you stop posting on this thread.

This argument is had here so frequently. "I did not allow my child to be picky!" This parent has not met your kid though....and has no idea what she would do with him/her

+1, but the flip side is that their kids is also accustomed tone foods *they* eat. Eating sushi but rejecting chicken nuggets is just another form of picky, although parents would like to pat themselves on the back for having a sushi eating kid. At least nugget loving parents see the issue.

PP here. Actually, that was kind of my point. Don’t let them develop a niche. It’s a lot more work to keep making a variety of food so they don’t see the same food often. It’s hard to become picky if you don’t have the feeling that PBJ is available every lunch you ask for it.

Of course I am not talking about people who have aversions or medical issues that require a feeding clinic. That’s very hard. OP is just talking about pickiness and development. I feel like pickiness is really a cultural thing. My husband and I were raised in different cultures, both of which don’t have kids menus. Pickiness to the degree I commonly see it here is very rare. Here it seems that children between 1-10 are expected to mainly eat carbs only, with a handful of vegetables on rotation and hopefully a few proteins if you are lucky. People talk like that is the average.