Every parent, however brilliant, balanced, patient, tolerant, skilled, loving or graced with a kitchen filled with ripe avocados and fresh basil, will, at some point in their parenting life, come across a child who takes one look at the food on their plate, makes a face like a dog eating a lemon, and say ‘URRGHGHGH! I DON’T LIKE THIS!’ before pushing the food away and refusing to open their mouth for an hour.
This, my friend, is absolutely normal, expected, and par for the parenting course.
All children – just like all adults I’ve ever met – have foods they like, and foods they don’t like.
And this changes with the Seasons. Or months. Or…hours.
A child who loved spaghetti on a Monday, to the point of refusing to eat almost anything else, is quite capable of looking at exactly the same dish on Wednesday and swear you are trying to poison them with this revolting, inedible, tasteless pile of manure.
Come back on Friday, and it’s back to ‘I want spaghetti!’ again.
It’s very tiring, and the amount that’s been written about what exactly we should DO about this food-faddish behaviour, would fill….well, far too many books.
Back in the day…
When I was a child, it was very simple; you ate what you were given. If you didn’t eat it, you were hungry.
There was no alternative, no choice, no pandering to individual likes and dislikes. This is your dinner. Eat it.
Of course, if there were actual allergies involved, that was entirely different. The ‘70s were pretty bonkers in terms of parenting, but nobody would feed a child food that might kill them, just because they didn’t believe in giving in to children’s demands!
But it was all very simple, and there was almost no fuss made about fussing, at all. Because…there wasn’t any.
Fast forward thirty years and there is barely a child in any class at nursery or school who doesn’t refuse to eat one kind of food or other.
If you invite children round for a play and some dinner these days, you’d better get ready to send a spreadsheet to their parents first to find out how warm they like their baked beans, exactly what size of carrot pieces they will deign to eat, and whether they prefer orange or blackberry juice.
If you don’t, you’re in for a very rocky dinner time, and you could well end up sending them back home starving.
I’ve had children to play who refused to eat pasta. Just….PASTA. Not even with anything on it.
Some refuse cheese, others tomatoes, some are sick if you even mention Marmite, and then there was the child who had only eaten white bread for three years.
Modern diets
And the list of intolerances children seem to have these days is extraordinary. Gluten, wheat, dairy, sugar, lactose, starch, acid, fun….the list goes on and on.
I’m not saying these children are NOT intolerant to any of these things, of course. If they are, they are, and they need to have a diet that protects them from consuming things that make them unwell.
But quite how this enormous increase in intolerances, dislikes and refusals has occurred in such a short period of time does strike me as remarkable.
There are lots of theories about environmental factors, changes in the content of much of the food we eat every day, allergens in the air, water and plastic, the evils of radiation from mobile phones and the Mother Of All Evils, SUGAR, and how all of this may have affected our children’s digestive development and immune systems, making many more of them intolerant or allergic to lots of things.
And some of this is almost certainly true.
But I think there is probably also a not insignificant effect from parents who watch their children spit out food they are not at all allergic or intolerant to at all, and who are simply making a fuss – and allow them to do it.
Parents who fuss
Parents who cook three different versions of the same meal, just to please all of their children’s individual likes and wants.
And who, without meaning to, are teaching their children that if they don’t like something they just have to make a big, ugly fuss about it, and they will be given something else that they do like. And that they can have everything they want, all the time. Even if it’s inconvenient for you, and there is no need.
Which, as we all know, is exactly how life works – right? No, exactly.
From the very first drop of milk to the last thing we ever eat, food – and feeding people – can be a very complicated, emotional battleground. Mothers want nothing more than to nurture and feed their children.
Children want nothing more than to exert control over their parents, and get attention. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to kick up a fuss about what they’re being fed.
Meal times can be unbearably tense before the food has even touched the plates! But the only way this happens is if we show them that their behavior is getting to us, annoying us and angering us. That way, they get exactly what they want. So for as long as we can, and from as early as possible, it’s better to try and be really relaxed and calm about food, feeding and eating, and not let it become a vehicle for either of you to try and win control over the other.
Food is to be enjoyed, bit fought over! And yes, of course if your child hates a certain food to the point of eating nothing at all, or being sick, then give it a miss for a while. Just quietly though, and without fuss or ceremony.
By next Thursday it might well have passed.