Reply to Bring outside food to restaurant for child

Forum Index » Food, Cooking, and Restaurants

Reply to "Bring outside food to restaurant for child"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hi Op, haven’t read the whole thread, but wanted to chime in. My 6 year old is an extremely picky eater, but will eat pepperoni pizza like nobody’s business. When the rest of the family wants to go out to eat to a non pizza serving place,  we bring a small pepperoni pizza for him to eat. We do this almost weekly and have not had any comments from any establishment.  We are a 4 person family, but usually order a lot of food and drinks. We make up for the 6 year old not eating. Now admittedly, we aren’t doing this at Komi or Pineapple & Pearls and we tip well.[/quote]

I just can't fathom doing this with a 6 year old who, it seems, doesn't have any particular SN and is just a picky eater.

When do you plan on pulling the cord on this?  There has to be some point where you won't feel ok bringing a slice of pizza for your kid, and how is your kid ever going to learn to broaden his horizons?

A lot of the work to expand his palate should be done at home -- and I hope you are doing what you can for your sake and your kid's -- but you also need to get him accustomed to trying things in restaurants.  But he isn't going to do that if he knows he can just have pizza. [/quote]

To be honest, this isn’t a hill we want to die on. We would like to expand his palate but he just isn’t there yet. When he is ready to “broaden his horizons” we have no doubt he will. When he discovered pizza, it was like Christmas Day! He eats the same thing for lunch four days a week at school and gets pizza one day a week. We try new things at dinner, and he will just not eat. He doesn’t whine or pout about it. He respectfully says “I don’t want to try that” or will try it and say he doesn’t like it. We tried “he’ll eat when he’s hungry” and not offer his favorites, he went 58 hours without eating and only drank water.

A year ago he was ONLY eating Chana Masala, rice and Cheerios (that lasted from about 18 months to 5 years old). Pepperoni on pizza and ground beef (in spaghetti only) is the only meat he will eat, and he just started eating spaghetti this past summer. Kid is on the spectrum, but out of all the issues we’ve taken a loss on, eating pizza is a win. He plays a mean piano, knows his multiplication tables and reading on a 2nd grade level. We will pull the cord when it seems appropriate for him.  We parent based on what works for our family.  As far as being rude, we are discreet when bringing in food, but I’m pretty sure our tip and his giant smile makes up for it. He is our joy.

[/quote]

A healthy diet of something other than pizza should be the one hill to die on. I'm not judging you especially since he has SN, but this problem will only become worse as he gets older. Only pick restaurants that serve pizza for now. Think outside of the box. Make it his mission to try pepperoni pizza at every place you can find, sort of like a world tour. Call it the DS's YourState Pizza Tour. Make a ticket with all of the restaurants you've found listed on both sides. Give him a hole punch to mark the ticket at every restaurant after he tries the pizza. On the back, list each restaurant and let him make a note critiquing the pizza at each place visited.

If he's a child that is into lists, make a second card where he can list and circle number scores for new foods that he has tried at home or while eating out. Categories could be: presentation, color, texture, flavor, temperature, messiness.

Also, get him a child's cookbook and let him prepare a meal he'd like to try. He might want to taste it if he made it. I let my children do a lot in the kitchen at his age.

Sometimes taking their mind off of the task of eating the actual food and focusing it on another task at the same time can help. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics