Do you make your kids eat what they are served?

[Run-A-Muck Ranch]

Forgot to add to my earlier post.....

That our kids do need to try something. Their age worth of bites. Obviously as they get older they aren't so happy about that, but it works. I know there are food they love and hate. They need to try it. Sometimes it's all show too....I can make something-and they will hate it. Go to someones house or out to eat have the same thing and they'll gobble it down.

Other things are more difficult to get them to do though...
Get along with each other
brush teeth
shower/take bath
clean room
do homework
do chores(except for the animals They love feeding time for them. And they know if they don't feed the animals, they don't get them)
To bad this don't work with other things. I have tried the if you don't pick it up-I throw it away. Well I have had that one blow up in my face...Sometimes the 7 year old will bag up all her stuff on her floor to go to the dumpster instead of clean....

 

[Dar]

I am so blessed...my kids eat everything under the sun..they even eat stuff that i dont..

my 6yr old daughtr loves black olives...i hate them
my 10 yr old and my 6 yr olf love smoked fish...i will eat it in little amounts.

all my kids love calamari (squid) we all like that one but we played games with it the first time they tried it. I know i am going to get heat for playing with food but it was not like that. we make guessing games and see who can get closer to what it is.

my kids will eat all veggies i put in front of them. fiddle heads to eggplant brussle sprouts (they call them baby cabbages)

when i first started introducing them to new foods we made a picnic in the middle of the living room floor and had a buffett style dinner and we all sit on the floor on a blanket . we use the long fondue forks and just eat it off the serving plate so this turns into a fun and special thing for them to do.

my daughter also loves what my dad calls perriwinkles. they look like little snails

 

[Dar]

Quote:
the key to the garbage threat is to follow through...I have been after my kids not to bring IPODS and webkinz to school and i found an IPOD in my sons backpack well its gone...it is mine now mind you those things are great..and as for the webkinz i had to throw out 2 and then she got the point and the real kicker is i made her throw it in the garbage and then take the bag to the curb so she knew i was not playing games any more

 

[Anne]

Quote:
I am quite positive that my 2-year-old son was born that way. As an infant, when we were just starting to introduce him to baby food, he could down a whole jar of fruit-flavored baby food but would scream until he couldn't breathe if he got so much as a single mouthful of green bean, pea, or carrot-flavored baby food. We kept offering but to this day he still has not changed his mind about vegetables. I have to sneak veggies into his food to get him to eat them.

Honestly I think in some cases a hatred of green vegetables is genetic. Green veggies always tasted very bitter to me -- I was labeled a "supertaster" in a college lab about sensory perception (we all had to lick a piece of paper coated with a substance -- some people couldn't taste anything, some people could taste a little bit, I had to run to the water fountain to wash my mouth out). Some people are just very sensitive to the compounds contained in green vegetables. I think my son got it from me.

My hubby, on the other hand, will eat everything, as will my stepson.

 

[Katy]

My kids (they're all grown now)always had to try at least a bite or two. If they didn't like it fine they didn't have to eat it, but they knew I wasn't a short order cook so it was either what I fixed or fix their own sandwich. I did always try to make a meal where there was at least one thing that I knew everyone would eat. When we ate at someone's house they knew to politely try things. On the other hand I've got 2 neices, ages 22 and 19 and they will wrinkle their noses and make a fuss at family dinners when there's food they don't care for. They're picky eaters and there's not much they'll eat. They are definately old enough to not act the way they do!!!!! Oh well...that behavior isn't the only thing their mother and I disagree on!

 

[fowltemptress]

I read a study where people who had never been exposed to cinnamon were given food with cinnamon in it or something . . . the people thought the food smelled like poison and wouldn't touch it. So I'm sure exposure to foods has some factor in pickiness. My SO, who has traveled to 28 different countries and lived in four of them, has such eclectic tastes that he thinks everything I cook is entirely too boring . . . I wish he'd gotten a little less exposure growing up

 

[ams3651]

i have a rule, my aunt calls it a No Thank YOu serving. 2 bites chewed and swallowed before you can say you dont like it. I figure how can I make them eat things when there are things I dont like. My son has happened upon some things he found out he liked. I told him, what if its your most favorite food but you would never know because you never tried it. He agreed, just last night he tried Italian Wedding Soup and liked it. It was the only kind of soup left and we was hungry. If it was something they truely didnt like I would give them something else later and just tell them to find something there that they can eat till then.

 

[windtryst]

My kids had to eat or wait till the next meal...American children and parents do not know what "hungry" is... believe me they ate a healthy breakfast the next morning if they chose not to eat dinner! Never a fight, just a rule.
You should see them now, ages 30 and soon to be 32!
Don't fight over it, just make them wait till the next meal & the next & the next...soon they will be hungry and grateful.

 

[Ugly Cowboy]

Well, with me, it was... If ya didnt work, ya didnt eat, which I like that rule, I never had a problem with that one. If ya didnt like what was on the table, ya didnt eat (good thing I like everything but raw tomatoes.

) If I didnt shoot enuff game to support the rest of the family, I didnt eat ( that was a little much, I was still a growin boy at the time.) And some other rules, but we aint gonna get into that LOL!

 

[CritterHill]

Ok, I haven't read the whole thread (will do that once I get the kids out of the tub and into bed) but I had to post because this is a tricky one.

I have a kid who at 3 years old started losing weight (and she was only about 24 pounds to begin with - at 3 years old...)

She sees a specialist every 3 months since she has rheumatoid arthritis. Over the course of 3 months, her weight started plunging. At our next visit, they panicked and sent her for extensive testing (celiac, autoimmune thyroid, etc) because of her weight loss at a point in her life where she should have been growing.

Diagnosis? Picky eater. (Thank you God, we didn't need another issue on top of the RA).

And this was WITHOUT us sending her to bed hungry, if she didn't like dinner, she was allowed to have yogurt instead. No additional cooking, but no going hungry either.

So she wasn't starving to death or anything, but you could see her ribs...

So no way can I send this kid to bed hungry, but I also won't be a short order cook!

She is now 5 and still a stick figure, but up to 30 pounds! Woo!

I don't think there is a hard and fast rule on this one since all kids are different, but in our house, eat what I cook or fix yourself a yogurt has at least kept them from starving to death and we don't have to deal with the drama of sitting at a table for hours staring at a plate of cold lima beans (memory from my youth - I still refuse to eat lima beans and I'm 37).