There’s nothing I love more than the feeling of prepping and cooking all day, smelling and sampling as the sides and gravy come together, and finally piling scoops of everything onto my Thanksgiving plate. But before I hop into the procession around the kitchen to dip into each casserole dish, I’ll have to make my 3-year-old’s plate first. It’ll be something like cold pepperoni, string cheese, and some clementine wedges. Yes, yes, I know all that home-cooked food is sitting right there, but just hold on. The way to get him to try any of it, is to offer him none of it.
For starters, the term “picky eater” is on its way out. As more and more overhyped solutions arise trying to prevent picky eating or intervene on it in infancy (and inevitably fail to do so), a growing number of parents are realizing that frankly, toddlers just don’t have diverse diets. Neophobia – the fear of trying new foods – peaks between ages 2 and 6. It’s a holdover from early humans, a protective instinct that prevented young kids from putting every poisonous berry or mushroom straight into their gob while their parents were wrangling a bison to the ground. It’s present in nearly half of 4-year-olds, but only 14% of 5- to 9-year-olds. Saying yes to beloved foods and no to unfamiliar ones is also a way for toddlers to exercise their independence, and if you know toddlers, you know they don't ever pass up this chance.
My son is 3, and yes, we still make him his own separate breakfasts, lunches, and dinners most days (somewhere, the baby-led weaning apostles are plotting my demise for that admission). The list of foods he likes is longer than it once was, but the items on it can be frustratingly simple: fruits, crackers, pretzels, chicken nuggets, string cheese. Any of the “real meals” my husband and I might make are nonstarters for him. Spaghetti and meatballs is his textural nightmare – slippy, slidy sauce, ground beef, the mouthfeel of which gets weirder the longer you think about it, and don’t get him started on his distaste for pasta (“no noonles”). He’s simply not interested in complex flavors or textures yet, so his dinner is usually some form of toddler charcuterie. We’ve learned to enjoy the simplicity of it. His meals are easy to make, filling and enjoyable for him, and he eats way more fruit in a day than either of his parents.
We have certainly tried to get our son to taste more foods – agonized over it at times. We’ve done the oft-hyped method of putting a solitary steamed carrot on his plate and encouraging him to poke it, sniff it, anything to help him “familiarize himself” with it or recognize it as suitable for human consumption. We have demanded, pleaded, and straight-up bribed him into taking bites of things he’d otherwise side eye and place back on my plate. And we have learned that in giving up – because try as I may to think of one, there is no humane way to force feed new foods to a child – our kid will use his burgeoning independence to ask for a bite. He’s like a cat at a house party. Let him observe and come to you.
The moment you offer him a new food, you’ve scared the cat back under the bed.
Recently, we met up with family at a barbecue restaurant. My kid was happily noshing on a crinkle fry next to me when I noticed him eyeing my styrofoam cup of baked beans. He asked to try some, and I gingerly captured a single bean on the end of my spoon to offer him. He proceeded to help me polish off the bowl, and even requested a bite of cornbread before deciding he’s more of a biscuit guy. A few days later, sweaty and half-drenched in hose water from playing with his cousins, he sat down with them to eat lunch in my sister’s driveway. We’d been serving him PB&J sandwiches for a few weeks and he would lick the spreads off and ditch the bread, but that day, he devoured the whole thing.
Which brings us to Thanksgiving.
Most Thanksgiving dishes – veggie casseroles, herby gravy, and jiggly cranberry sauce – are not things he sees any other time of year. So, I’m not holding out much hope he’ll want to taste it all, but with our new live and let live approach to meals, I’m hopeful my son may just buy into the hype of the holidays. Special plates? So many people he loves at the table playing Spiderman figurines with him around the place settings? But the possibility of him braving a taste of something new, like he did on bean night, hinges on one thing: everyone at the table needs to play it cool.
“Cooper, want a taste of the…?” No. “Here buddy, have some mashed pota…” Shhh. You see, the moment you offer him a new food, you’ve scared the cat back under the bed.
My advice to all family members of toddlers this year is to ignore their plate entirely. Do not perceive it, and definitely don’t say anything about what’s on or missing from it. Chat with them about their recent trip to the zoo, what all their friends dressed as for Halloween, or what’s on their Christmas list. There are so many more interesting things to talk about, at all ages, than what we will and won’t eat. Doing so might earn you a hilarious toddler soundbyte that you’ll recount at every Thanksgiving dinner to come.
Even if the young children in other families are nothing like mine, I’d wager that their parents feel similarly. We have spent hundreds of meals negotiating about how many grapes eaten is enough to get up from the table, how the green bean on the edge of the child’s plate is not a direct threat or a middle finger from us to them. The relationship between parents, child, and child’s plate is usually a fraught little triangle in some way, and all parties would be relieved if no one else tried to get involved. Besides, without getting too saccharine about the meaning of the holidays, the real point of Thanksgiving is to spend time with family, make memories, and leave satisfied. If that means one attendant departs with a belly full of Goldfish crackers and Cool Whip from the pie table, well, so be it.
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