A battle of wills (and greens)
NS December 3rd, 2007
TNC has gone completely off fruits and vegetables and it is driving. me. NUTS! She used to eat pretty much any veg I gave her, bar potatoes, corn and tomatoes. She loved spinach, peas, sweet potatoes, broccoli, beans, carrots, leeks, squash, etc.. But when I stopped pureeing her food the battles began. Now that she can see exactly what she’s being given, she refuses it 95% of the time. It doesn’t matter if I chop it into tiny little pieces, cover it in yummy sauces, blend it in with something else, or give it to her in chunks. The only things she will eat anymore are spinach (sometimes) if it’s with a very cheesy pasta, and sweet potatoes, if there is nothing else in it. God forbid I put some small pieces of chicken in there.
And fruit has gone right out the window as well. The girl who used to wolf down two bananas a day will now not touch them and also refuses apples, grapes, oranges, kiwis, plums, nectarines, peaches, mangoes, melon and any kind of berry. The only way I get her to eat any fruit at all is to add it to smoothies with yogurt and apple juice. She will eat dried fruit until the cows come home (dates, raisins, cranberries) but supposedly dry fruit is constipating so I try not to let her have too much.
At the moment, her staple diet is: breakfast — porridge with cinnamon sprinkled on top or cereal with milk (usually either muesli or Cheerios); lunch — yogurt or cheese, fruit smoothie or juice, plain crackers or toast with either peanut butter or hummus; dinner — cod fish cake, cous cous or more of the stuff she has for lunch, if she won’t eat the vegetables I offer. Her snacks consist of dried fruit bars, raisins or dried cranberries, olives (she is so her mother’s daughter) or more crackers.
I usually attempt to make her one new dish a week, either especially made or a leftover portion of our previous night’s dinner, and 9.5 times out of 10, she flat out refuses to even taste it. I wouldn’t mind so much if she tried it and decided she didn’t like it, but she just pushes it away, covers her face and shouts “No!” until she gets hysterical and red in the face. If I give up and offer her one of the standby items, she stops crying immediately and laughs. An evil, maniacal laugh that mocks me. The girl just turned 20 months old yesterday and already she is making me look like a doormat.
This has got to change.
So yesterday I resolved not to give her too many snacks or too much to drink just before dinner so she would be hungry. She started asking for food at 4.30 so I heated up the sweet potato I had baked the day before and added some chopped up chicken to it, and a bit of milk to make it less dry. She usually loves sweet potatoes but I guess since there were unidentified blobs of evilness (poultry) in there, she decided that not a morsel would touch her lips. Nothing worked — letting her feed herself, trying to feed her, putting it in front of her repeatedly, letting her get down from the table and leaving it within her reach so she could help herself when ready…Nothing. Nada. I felt bad that she was hungry so I went and got an apple. I asked her if she wanted it and she nodded enthusiastically. I handed it to her and she tried to bite into it but she usually needs help getting it started so I took it back and took a small bite to help her out. She then refused to take it back and threw herself down on the floor in floods of tears that made Gwyneth Paltrow and Halle Berry’s Oscar acceptance speeches look like calm, measured, non-emotional responses.
I remembered reading that the most important things to remember about food and toddlers is to not show them you are upset and make it into a battle, but also not to give in and get them something else. The reasoning being, if they are hungry, they will eat. If these are the only choices and they know they will get nothing else, they will eat. So I remained calm, told her I understood her frustration but that these foods were perfectly healthy, tasty and acceptable and that she could choose to eat the sweet potato with chicken or the apple, but she was getting nothing else.
Two hours later, after containing her tantrums to one room so as not to destroy the others, she was still crying and throwing herself around the room like a child possessed. Occasionally she would be distracted by a toy or the phone but she kept tugging on my shirt saying ‘food!’ as if I would just get up and get whatever her heart desired. I felt absolutely terrible and my heart broke a little watching how distraught she looked as she eyed up the sweet potatoes and apple with disdain, but I thought if I just held strong, she would buckle. I even reheated it twice so it wouldn’t be stone cold but to no avail. Finally, just before bedtime and when she was calmed down and seemed to have forgotten about food, I let her have a small cup of milk just so she wasn’t going to bed with nothing to eat or drink. She went to bed easily, at her usual time, and was asleep within minutes. Maybe she just wasn’t hungry? That seems unlikely though, given that she kept saying ‘food’.
Today, I don’t know what I think of my experiment. It didn’t feel good to deny her any food because she wouldn’t eat the two choices I gave her, but then again, I know that if I keep allowing her to eat whatever she wants, she will turn into the fussiest eater ever. I really really do not want that. I refuse to be one of those moms who serves her kid(s) one or two things because “that’s all they’ll eat.” Cheese and crackers and raisins does not a balanced diet make. Then the other part of me says “So what? She’ll grow out of it and eventually eat more varied foods and some vegetables….right?”
With all the pressure from the media, other parents and judgmental societal commentary on kids’ diets, it’s easy to think you must get your child eating their greens or it will only be an uphill battle later. Admitting that your kid doesn’t eat vegetables is akin to admitting you let them play in traffic while striking matches and balancing knives on their head. Jamie’s School Dinners is great but man, I kinda hate him a little too.
So if anyone has any bright ideas or words of wisdom (or just sympathy!), I am all ears. This battle-weary, toddler-tantrum-dreading mother needs some inspiration.
