Picky, Picky, Picky

My child will eat the following foods:

• pancakes
• french toast
• blueberry muffins
• whole wheat bread
• white bread
• good, crusty bread
• rolls
• pumpkin bread
• raisin bread
• flour tortillas
• raw carrots
• spinach nuggets
• french fries
• salsa, but only at El Coyote, his favorite Mexican restaurant
• apples, peeled and sliced
• cantaloupe
• watermelon
• homemade, chunky apple sauce
• yogurt
• frozen yogurt
• ice cream (vanilla or chocolate)
• chocolate chip cookies
• brownies
• chocolate cake
• string cheese
• grilled cheese sandwiches (cheddar)
• quesadillas
• cheeseburgers (plain, just meat, cheese and bun)
• hot dogs (plain, just meat and bun)
• tacos (plain, just meat, cheese and shell)
• ham
• turkey
• bacon
• barbecued ribs
• chicken nuggets
• steak
• grilled chicken...sometimes
• sausages
• fish sticks...sometimes
• mussels (steamed or in a red sauce)
• clams (steamed or in a red sauce)
• pizza (plain cheese or pepperoni)
• pasta with tomato sauce
• Progresso Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice Soup with extra brown rice added
• potato chips
• Snapea Crisps
• tortilla chips
• Sun chips
• graham crackers
• Trader Joe's veggie sticks
• Pirate Booty
• Goldfish crackers
• Water
• Milk...sometimes
• Apple Juice...sometimes

Mmmm...that's it.

You will notice that of the 55 items on this list, 30 things are or include starches, 14 are or include meat, 8 dairy and 4 are fruits (that's including the apple juice) and 3 are vegetables. Of the items that I choose to deem vegetables, one is tomato sauce, and one (spinach nuggets) comes disguised in the form of meat. Maybe I could include blueberry muffins in the fruit catagory, and Snapea Crisps in the vegetable group. But that would be cheating.

Yes, Jude is a picky eater. Not that he doesn't eat. He just eats very large quantities of very few foods. With a few peculiar exceptions, he eats only "kid food". Nutrition is iffy. While Jimmy and I are omnivores, Jude is what I will call...a rarivore. I believe I have invented that word.

In general, I consider myself a fairly good mother. I'm a "hands-on" mother. But in this area I fear that I have failed. I have read books about picky eaters. I have sought advice. Nothing helps. And after almost 8 years of constant worry and distress, I have come to the conclusion that I can do absolutely nothing to remedy this situation but wait until he grows up a little. Because it's just the way he is. I have come to believe that picky eating is as much nature as it is nurture.

As every mother of a rarivore knows, nothing is more annoying than having someone who is a parent of a child who is an omnivore give advice to you. Here is my message to these self-righteous people: SHUT UP.  YOUR CHILD DOESN'T EAT WELL BECAUSE YOU ARE AN OUTSTANDING PARENT. THEY EAT WELL BECAUSE THEY JUST DO. UNLESS YOU HAVE A CHILD WHO WON'T EAT ONE DAMNED THING, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

Whew. That made me feel better.

I have several friends who are parents of two children. One (usually the girl) will eat anything. Beets. Quinoa. Caviar. The other child (usually the boy) will eat nothing but chicken and bread. They were raised in the same family, by the same parents, being offered the same foods, at the same times, but with very different outcomes.

I will admit to a certain amount of failure in my nurturing. Though I blame some of it on my pediatriian, and some on my mother-in-law, Mommy. Because she's...nutty. And fearful. Let me explain.

When I was pregnant with Jude, I gained 60 pounds.

Are you still there? Have you picked yourself off the floor yet? Yes, 60 pounds. How did I achieve this  amazing feat? I would say that it's because I ate too damned much. And when Jude arrived, he was a big, healthy baby. 8 lbs, 6 oz.

For the first 13 months of his life, he was breastfed. He very much liked his Mama's milk. The problems arose when he was 4 or 5 months old, when I started introducing solid foods. Because...he did not like anything. I tried everything. I tried homemade baby food. I tried jarred baby food. I tried organic jarred baby food. There were some things he seemed to like for a while. But after a few times eating it, he would proceed to just spit it out with a "bleeeeech" sound. The only baby food he continued to like was an Earth's Best organic blend of peaches, oatmeal and strawberries. At one point, that was the only solid food the kid ate for months.

Here's my 208th attempt at spinach...

 

Now many people would, at this point, just say "Don't give him to him. Make him eat what you're offering. If he's hungry enough, he'll eat it." I can't tell you how many times I heard this. All very well and good. However...

It was during this time that our pediatrician scared the poop out of me.  Every time we went for a visit, she weighed him, and it became apparent over a period of several months, that he wasn't gaining weight as quickly as was the norm. You know how pediatricians always worry so much about those stupid percentiles? Well, he had been born in the 80th percentile, but by 8 months, he was down to the 10th percentile. Not that he wasn't growing, or gaining weight. It just wasn't as fast as the norm. She told me that if he didn't start catching up, she was going to have to report his "failure to thrive". Image my horror.

And compounding this problem was a strange combination of neuroses and nature that made my quandry even worse. Mommy, and by extention, Jimmy, are both ridiculously, irrationally afraid of choking. It's a constant fear. Every time I tried to put anything that wasn't pureed into the child's mouth, gasps could be heard. And on top of that, the kid was SO SLOW to grow teeth. It was months and months before I could safely give the child so much as a Cheerio without his being hovered over just in case the Heimlich was needed.

So basically, I fed the child what he would eat.

Had I been able to just hold out until he was "hungry enough" to eat whatever I was offering, would his eating habits be different today? Maybe. But I doubt it.

I've never felt that Jude's pickiness was in any way manipulative on his part. He just doesn't like things. Am I being blind to my child's behavior? I don't think so. I think I know him pretty well.

I've seen quite a bit of what I believe IS manipulation from other kids. Jude has one friend who has turned food into a HUGE power play with his mother. It's borderline eating disorder how weird this kid is about food.

I have a friend, a 50-something year old woman, who will only eat white food. She now claims that she has finally been diagnosed as having "food aversion syndrome", which just makes me roll my eyes. Because she is the biggest fuss-budget I know, someone who complains about absolutely everything in her life, and is a complete hypochondriac. So it's so typical of her to have found a "syndrome" to explain why she won't eat a damned thing.

But could it be possible? Could there be an actual physical reason that Jude won't eat many things? I remember a science experiment I did when I was in the Fifth Grade. We took these little strips of paper and placed them on different parts of our tongues to figure out which parts of the tongue sense which tastes. Different areas taste sweet, sour, bitter and salty. But the thing I remember most, was that some kids would taste sour and say "Yum" while others said "Yuck!". The same tastes, but completely different reactions.

So could it be that Jude's tastes simply react differently from most people's? One of his food issues is that he absolutely won't eat anything sour or tart. No citrus. No strawberries. He used to eat them, but then one time he bit into one that was a little sour and he has refused to eat them ever since. This isn't a completely bad thing, as it means that I am able to eat all the Sweet Tarts out of his Halloween candy.

His other issue is texture. He won't eat anything soft or mushy. No mac and cheese. No mashed potatoes. No oatmeal. I'm thinking this might explain the problem with baby food. On the other hand, the few soft things he does like  (ice cream, yogurt) have to be totally smooth. He doesn't like his smooth and his crunchy at the same time. I was ridiculously thrilled when he decided to try cookies and cream ice cream, and deemed it delicious. You'd have thought the child had eaten a salad by the way I reacted.

I have tried many, many tactics in my various attempts to remedy this situation. I have tried sneaking more healthful foods into the less healthful foods - pureed sweet potatoes into his tomato sauce, spinach into the brownies. It doesn't work. The kid's onto me. I read somewhere that if you offered a child something enough times, he will eventually give in, and try it. I decided to test this theory. When I packed his little lunch box for preschool, I included a little plastic bag which contained one carrot and one cherry tomato. Every day, he ate his carrot, and left his cherry tomato. I refused to give up. I continued to include the cherry tomato for an entire YEAR. He never ate that damned tomato. Finally, one day, his wise old preschool teacher told me it was time to give it up.

Should I be worried? He is growing and gaining weight. He's extremely healthy, and energetic. I had one old boyfriend who swore that for 4 years of his life, he had eaten nothing but bologna on white bread with mayonnaise. For every meal for 4 years. He is now a healthy man in his fifties who surfs regularly and has all his teeth.

I feel that gradually, Jude will broaden his tastes. If you read the list above carefully, you would have seen two somewhat startlingly non-kid-friendly items - mussels and clams. These are both recent additions to the list. One night, we were eating in a restaurant, and Jude suddenly looked at Jimmy's plate of pasta and asked "What's that?" "Linguini with Clams" said Jimmy "You should try a bite." "Okay" said Jude. We both stared for a beat, holding our breathes. He wanted to TRY. He ended up eating about a quarter of Jimmy's dinner. Stunning.

So you never know. Maybe if we keep offering and offering, he will turn from rarivore to omnivore. I just hope he still lets me eat all his Sweet Tarts.

 

Comments

[unmitigated me]

My son has the same texture issues. He's 19 now, almost 6'4" and plenty healthy. Don't stress about the food. I've always believed it was a bad idea to turn food into an argument, or something to be used for a power play. Growing up, my mom fed us lots of crap, all processed, highly salted, canned crap. And I am fine.

[Erica@Pines Lake Redhead]

My youngest is my picky eater. But somehow he's developed expensive tastes at restaurants. He loves sushi and lobster bisque.

[Ginny Marie]

I was the one who was a freak about Lily choking when she was a baby, and the pediatrician was shocked when I was still feeding her baby food at nine months and not finger food! Oh, well, live and learn. She didn't get any teeth until she was 13 months old, and so I was a paranoid mother. When I tried to give Emmy finger foods earlier than Lily, I discovered she had an extreme gag reflex and would throw up all the time. Just the other week, she threw up because she had an itty bitty piece of green pepper in her chili, and she is three and a half. I love your message to self-righteous people!

[Jan]

"Don't give in to him. Make him eat what you're offering. If he's hungry enough, he'll eat it."

BULLSHIT.

While my two older children would eat anything that isn't nailed down, The Young One grew up with many of the food likes/dislikes as Jude - in fact, at 16, he still won't eat yogurt or ice cream with pieces of fruit in it or crunchy peanut butter. When he was small if I tried to MAKE him eat something he didn't want to eat (i.e. what I was eating), he'd refuse and just go hungry. I often ended up giving him food I knew wasn't the healthiest (i.e. chicken nuggets and Kraft mac n' cheese) just so he would eat *something*.

The good news is, even with his issues with texture, he is much more open to new foods - he will usually eat a bite or two, even if he doesn't care for it, and he has come to like many foods he wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole as a little boy. Also, the kid is an omnivore to his toes - 99% of the time, he eats the meat on his plate, and that includes beef liver (suitably smothered with bacon, of course). He is more educated about nutrition than all of his friends - thanks to his crazy mother who writes/talks/sounds forth about the subject endlessly - and is beginning to make better food choices on his own because of it.

Don't worry unduly about Jude - kids grow up, and if you continue to offer a wide variety of foods without making his refusal of them an issue, his palate will mature as he does.

[Lisa]

I agree that it's no fun to turn food into an argument, not then it is the thing that brings you together each evening and gives you such pleasure. I think they (we) all evolve our palette over our lifetimes. We struggle with the same concerns about nutrition, so every few nights Cooper gets a big glass of milk mixed with Carnation instant breakfast (chocolate, natch). I was pretty much raised on it and he will be, too! Our daughter is lactose intolerant so I just pump her up with a bunch of edamame every few days. They are both lean and very healthy. When I think about everything we know about Jude from your blog I'd say he's a happy, healthy, lucky kid!

[Sarah at themommylogues]

Your child eats more than mine do. I keep offering. One at a time, very, very slowly, they seem to add something in that is now deemed acceptable. I'm not worried about it, because my children sleep. You can't have everything. I'll take the sleep. Their pediatrician before we moved (who had also been my pediatrician, for what it's worth), really didn't think it was a big deal. "I remember one of my daughters only ate peanut butter sandwiches for years. She's fine now." That was some major reassurance for me.

And I'm totally on the paranoia train with Jimmy. My sister still laughs at me for breaking my daughter's first cheerios in half. I knew it was silly. But I couldn't help it.

[Sarah at themommylogues]

Oh, and I'm with Jude on the texture issues. I can't eat any kind of non-green bean. Too pasty. And my sister gags over mashmallow-like textures.

[VandyJ]

I have one relatively good eater--Turbo, but Bruiser, well let's just say the kid defines picky at two. I keep offering, sometimes he tries, but most often what he tries and doesn't like he spits back out. Sigh, I just sort of go with it at this point. Our standard rule (when kids are old enough to reason with) is to try one bite of everything. If you don't like it all you have to eat is that one bite, but you still have to keep trying it when it is served--tastes change.

[Keely]

I think he just has (gasp) PREFERENCES. People seem to think that children will eat whatever you put in front of them, if they don't think there is another option. Which is utter bullshit. Kids are small people - go figure! - and will like or dislike things. The likes or dislikes will probably change, but I think if he's eating and growing, what difference does it make?

My own kid has a similar list - yes, lots of them are "kid" foods, but he also likes avocado and broccoli. Some days he'll eat something, some days he won't. Whatever. Why fight over it if he's not literally starving?

[Lynn H]

really I've heard kids need mostly protein and carbs, which Jude has covered. Mine ate a pretty similar-type list, would eat ANY meat you put in front of her and a variety of carbs but very few veggies or fruits. I do like the "try one bite" rule because it is true that their tastes change; mine is a teen now but has been eating lots of types of green veggies since around age 8 (because she tried salad at a neighbors, etc, and finally broccoli looked good to her), far from the lone raw carrots she used to eat. We also do a vitamin, too, for anything she's missing. Overall, an extremely healthy and active teen who swims, runs, etc. So, again, don't worry; it's all pretty normal--just keep offering it with your meals but I too frown against the tug-of-war over it, as I think that creates more problems down the road.

[debbie]

I have four. One is a great eater. One would never eat anything smooth at all - and is now 17 and still won't. He's healthy. He's just odd:)

[Amy in Australia]

Yes! Say it, sister! Oh how I can relate. Actually, looks like Jude is doing great to me--there's a lot of things on that list that my kids wouldn't even look at! I think you're right, there is only so much we can do...we can't make them chew or swallow. Wait, can we? ;)

[Michele Renee]

My oldest did not like veggies--i was so amazed how his girl cousins ate salad. have to say as he got to be 11 or so seeing the other friends eat other things and wanting to be really strong with sports, or maybe just being older at age 14 now, that he is more interested in his health and eating more fruits/veggies.

[Rebecca Sirevaag]

Oh, I relate! My oldest (now 7) has major texture issues. Nothing too creamy or smooth. But nothing too chunky, either.
There was a period of time where she pretty much lived on mac & cheese. (which I find disgusting).
We also had the "taste it" rule, which I do think works/helps. She eats a lot more now, and when she'd taste things she'd suddenly discover that they were good. Really. She was eating her one bite of soup one night, we looked away, looked back and the entire bowl was gone. And she told us how good it was.
And my youngest (5) daughter will eat anything. In particular, veggies! She LOVES broccoli, carrots, green beans... Same house. Different kids.
And yes, we're TRULY evil- we do the whole reward thing with desserts. (mostly popsicles) You try everything on your plate and we'll give you a popsicle.
The only real encouragement I give parents is to have them try everything. It does help in the long run.

[Elizabeth Foley]

I was a lot worse than that. I don't think I ate any vegetables other than green beans, corn, carrots, and qualifying salad vegetables (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers), til I was...oh, wait, I guess that's still my basic reportoire. I hate the taste and feel of broccoli. I can't really explain why, but brussel sprouts scare me--to the extent that I still haven't tried them. Same for cauliflower. I have this weird thing about pork products--I'm basically a semi-kosher Episcopalian. And I've never learned to drink milk--when I was 3, my mom told me Christmas morning Santa had taken all of my bottles away (the only way I'd ddink it), and I just decided that was the end of me and milk. I'm amazed my parents didn't kill me. I know it frustrated them. Astonishingly enough though, with the addition of Flintstones to my diet, it all seemed to end up okay. I'm now almost 40 and not obviously growth-stunted, and even managed to pop out 2 healthy kids--whose job it now is to drive me nuts on this very subject. Karma, I guess! Good luck. Know that you're not alone. And that there doesn't have to be a "reason". Sometimes things just are the way they are, and we deal with them the best we can..

[Jenni]

Have you considered the possibility that he might be a super taster? He seems to have a problem with really strong tasting foods (straight spinach, citrus), but he enjoys sweeter foods (starches are all pretty sweet). Seriously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_taster

Check out that link. I wonder if you cold have him tested?

[tina erickson]

OMG! I deal with two picky eaters. I totally relate to this blog. Now, my 12 yr. old girl is not only picky but incredibly pickier than ever before. She told me the other day that she was allergic to glutton. Then she tells me every other day she wants to be a vegetarian but she hardly eats veggies. On and On it goes. Thanks for the blog.