Reply to Do you make separate dinner for your kids? Or do they eat what you eat?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]They're picky eaters because you feed them separately, not the other way around.[/quote]

I disagree with this. My parents never made separate meals, and I was a very picky eater.  DH and I agreed before having kids that we were not going to fight with our kids about food. We have two kids, raised together. One eats everything - more than I do, actually - and the other one eats pretty limited range of foods. My picky eater had a host of mild to moderate sensory issues as a young child. She’s grown out of most of them, but still has food issues around smell, texture, and taste. We’ve worked around it with a variety of strategies:

- Meal planning. My child will easily revert to eating only one preferred food, so we do menus for the week. We have allowed her to make her own choices since age 4, within guidelines we set. It’s easier for her to plan a variety of balanced meals when she is not hungry. Every lunch and dinner must include a main course/protein, fruit, and vegetable. None of these can repeat more than twice in a week (so, no PB&J at every meal).

- Snacking. Snacks are limited to fruit, cheese, nuts, etc. We don’t keep junk food in the house. If anyone is hungry close to meal time, they can either eat early, if the food is ready, or eat their vegetable. (We eat a lot of raw veggies, so this generally works for us.)  This is for everyone, not just our picky one.

- Shopping. We shop based on the menu and make sure we have plenty of the foods she will eat.

- Cooking. If we are making a pasta or rice dish, we will leave some plain for her. Otherwise, we have taught her to prepare the meals she eats. She is responsible for getting them on the table by meal time. She needed help with some things when she was younger, but is now pretty capable.

- Flexibility when eating out, whether at a restaurant or someone else’s house. If we eat out, she is free to eat or not eat whatever is available. If she is polite and does not complain, she can have dessert, even if she hasn’t eaten anything else.  We do not select restaurants based on her preferences. (It took us a long time and a lot of frustration to get to this point, but now it works well for us.)

As with many areas of parenting, you don’t have nearly as much control over your kids’ food issues as you think you do.  All these folks patting themselves on the back for making their kids good eaters are really just lucky to have good eaters.  On the other hand, your 3-year-old only knows the foods you expose her to, so if you don’t like what she’s eating, give her different choices. [/quote]

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