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

[Anonymous]

As for people saying your kids have opinions, yes — kids struggle for autonomy between 3-6, power and control is a huge deal. We offered them many other parts of life where they get that control. Whether or not to only eat snacks or have an alternate dinner was not one of them. They got power by helping cook (as in, child friendly knife, mixing spices, baking and measuring) and set the table. I think if you make them part of the meal in a grown up way, that goes a long way to not having them take it out on the food.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Ha! My sister was just like you -- so proud that her kids are what was served because there was nothing else.

Now her son is 18 and eats almost nothing but pasta and butter and cereal and junk food. He makes meals himself and he's a little too old now to force him to eat everything he used to eat (and hated, but ate it because she made him!)

[Anonymous]

If they eat a certain way now, I think they'll continue that way through adulthood. I'm sure we've all met that person who can't or won't try something new, and there's no sensory issue/medical reason. People like what they like and it's all shaped from when they're really little. Nothing wrong with liking nuggets and mac and cheese.

[Anonymous]

exposure isn’t everything- my 9 yo was always exposed to different cuisines but only agreed to try and liked certain things.
Like, the only Indian dish is chicken tikka masala; the only Mexican food is taco/burrito with only meat and rice; pho is beef and noodles and broth etc.
I actually don’t think he added many foods after he was, like, 3. All I can think of is hamburgers! Which have to be plain!
I remember I was very adventurous because my mom was a horrible cook and a super health freak, so anything better than her bland vegetable soup with olive oil was basically a feast.

[Anonymous]

She started being more open to trying new foods around 7-8. I think it was partly school lunch which features a wide range of foods and a diverse group of kids who eat different stuff (and think liking spicy food is cool) and partly loosing that preschooler need to control things by saying "NO!" She still dislikes "squishy" foods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Ha! My sister was just like you -- so proud that her kids are what was served because there was nothing else.

Now her son is 18 and eats almost nothing but pasta and butter and cereal and junk food. He makes meals himself and he's a little too old now to force him to eat everything he used to eat (and hated, but ate it because she made him!)

If they chose to do that when they are 18, I don't care. But for now, I love having kids that step into an Ethiopian restaurant and say "mmmm it smells so good in here!" and then devour their meals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

pp here. These posts do tend to bring out some hard core parents.

I will tell you that I did none of these things, and my middle schoolers still like funny sauces By the time they were old enough to be picky, they were old enough to make their own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and I always allowed anyone to eat PB&J whenever they wanted to.

I am willing to bet that your 8 year old will start trying more pretty soon. You will be surprised. It sounds to me like you are already doing the main things:
1) have family meals
2) cook regularly and teach your kids to cook and help with meal prep
3) teach your kids kindness and empathy. Frankly, at a certain age, it's pretty rude not to taste and try to like a meal that someone put some effort into making for you. Sure, four year olds are pretty obsessed with themselves, but a 10 year old should know better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Ha! My sister was just like you -- so proud that her kids are what was served because there was nothing else.

Now her son is 18 and eats almost nothing but pasta and butter and cereal and junk food. He makes meals himself and he's a little too old now to force him to eat everything he used to eat (and hated, but ate it because she made him!)

If they chose to do that when they are 18, I don't care. But for now, I love having kids that step into an Ethiopian restaurant and say "mmmm it smells so good in here!" and then devour their meals.

Yeah, that was never my nephew. He never loved food but he just had to eat it because his parents made him.

Never learned what foods he would like because of it -- it was always a chore he had to get through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She started being more open to trying new foods around 7-8. I think it was partly school lunch which features a wide range of foods and a diverse group of kids who eat different stuff (and think liking spicy food is cool) and partly loosing that preschooler need to control things by saying "NO!" She still dislikes "squishy" foods.

I am finding the same for my son. I was pretty picky until I was around the same age. Now I eat almost everything except eggplant and over easy eggs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If they eat a certain way now, I think they'll continue that way through adulthood. I'm sure we've all met that person who can't or won't try something new, and there's no sensory issue/medical reason. People like what they like and it's all shaped from when they're really little. Nothing wrong with liking nuggets and mac and cheese.

This is insane and so un true. The vast majority of adults in America today grew up eating, like, chicken nuggets and hot dogs. Foods like sushi, Thai food, Ethopian, etc. barely even existed in most of the US for our childhoods. And yet we all eat them now and something like sushi hardly even seems out of the ordinary anymore. The idea that toddler food preferences predict adult preferences is so beyond reality. Sure, I know a guy who won't eat vegetables but he is a crazy exception, not the norm!

[Anonymous]

Picky eaters exist o my because lazy parents allow them to.be picky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they eat a certain way now, I think they'll continue that way through adulthood. I'm sure we've all met that person who can't or won't try something new, and there's no sensory issue/medical reason. People like what they like and it's all shaped from when they're really little. Nothing wrong with liking nuggets and mac and cheese.

This is insane and so un true. The vast majority of adults in America today grew up eating, like, chicken nuggets and hot dogs. Foods like sushi, Thai food, Ethopian, etc. barely even existed in most of the US for our childhoods. And yet we all eat them now and something like sushi hardly even seems out of the ordinary anymore. The idea that toddler food preferences predict adult preferences is so beyond reality. Sure, I know a guy who won't eat vegetables but he is a crazy exception, not the norm!

Good point. The only “ethnic” food I had before my late teens was Americanized Chinese food. All my vegetables were canned or frozen except for iceberg salad. Now I eat a huge variety of foods

[Anonymous]

I got super worried that my daughter would never grow out of her pickiness (exactly as you describe) when she was about 8 or 9. We decided to institute family breakfasts on Sunday where everyone had to cook/invent something we hadn't had before, and everyone had to try what the others had made. Her first attempts to make up recipes ended up with stuff like berries and yogurt layered in a fancy glass with halloween candy sprinkled on top. But over time, she started to experiment with ingredients and get excited about cooking with and trying new flavors. Over perhaps the next year, she started reading cookbooks for ideas and picking out new ingredients at the store. She's 17 now and will try/enjoy about anything - and still makes dinner for the family one night a week. So maybe getting your kids involved with the cooking process will help to develop their interest in food?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Picky eaters exist o my because lazy parents allow them to.be picky.

Parents of picky eaters are not lazy. It would be so much easier to have a kid that ate anything and everything.

[Anonymous]

I have 3 kids. One is super picky, one is the most adventurous eater I have ever seen and more adventurous than I am (we are talking beetle larvae, bugs, escargot, etc) and one is kind of middle of the road. I parented them all the same. In our house the rule is, you do not have to eat anything you don’t want to, but the parent who is cooking makes one meal - so the kid has to get a replacement himself or herself if they don’t like what is being served.

My picky eater is much less picky when dining at friends’ homes. She has discovered she likes certain things her friends’ parents serve simply because she does not want to be rude. So in my house she eats canned soup and Saltines and with her friends it is spicy Moroccan soup with a special type of bread.

My picky eater is also much less picky when she is hungry. I was surprised the other week when she wanted a brisket sandwich from a food truck the rest of us were ordering from - turns out she was ravenous. Now she knows she likes brisket.