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T Benedict's avatar

Enjoyed this post on several levels. I'm of a similar age bracket to you and my parents, having grown up in the Depression were averse to anything resembling wastefulness, particularly when it came to food. So any resistance my brothers and I put up over certain foods was not well tolerated. In my case, I ate almost anything but my next brother despised peas and broccoli, spending long periods of time staring at the offending vegetables until he "cleaned his plate." But he ate nearly everything else without complaining and, to my parents' credit, eventually gave him a pass on those two foods. Harmony at the dinner table was returned to normal and nobody starved to death.

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Jorg's avatar

When I was a child we had a rule that has persisted now to my great-grandchildren. Children have new, or different, or unusual foods on their plates (in about a tablespoonful in total), and they must eat two bites (Mom decides the size of the bites), but after that they are free to ignore it until the next time it appears on the plate. After three tries they no longer have to eat that food until they "grow up" and they may choose to try it again. We just served them all plenty of home made cooking and very little sugary snacks. So far it works well.

My children both love spinach, raw or cooked despite their mother (a vegetarian) not liking it at all. Each of them eats a wide variety of foods (my daughter is now a "mostly vegetarian" who, oddly eats very spicy chili with hamburger in it occasionally). My son eats pretty much anything put in front of him. Their grown children are also pretty much "eat anything" types.

I think the trick is allowing some decision-making by children when they're quite young.

As an aside, as a baby my son would not eat any green baby food. Not green beans, not peas, not spinach. I would try to trick him by giving him a spoonful of half apricots, which he loved, and half green stuff. At 8 months he'd wallow the food around with his tongue, then spit out the green stuff every time. I still have no idea of why, or of how, exactly, he knew. Today he likes all of those green veggies.

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