How Do You Handle Food Fights With Your Kid?

So a hot topic in our household has always been what our son is eating. It’s one of the top things my husband and I argue about. We’re on the same page about allowance, discipline, and many other aspects of raising our two children, but after almost ten years of being parents we can’t seem to come together about what Jake puts in his mouth.

It’s not an issue with Fiona. Just today, as Jake was eating potato chips, Fiona was rummaging through the refrigerator looking for celery. And she didn’t use it the way I would have either, as a vehicle for cream cheese or peanut butter. No, she munched on it plain. She’s been blessed with tastes that gravitate towards fruits and vegetables and wheat bread. She enjoys potato chips and sugary things too, but she’s able to naturally balance the “good” stuff out with the “bad” and happily tries new things.

I don’t even like using the words good and bad to describe foods. Jake suffers from the same thing I do: we tend to automatically reject anything we see as good for us and crave things that are “bad.” He could happily live on pasta and bread and cheese and chocolate and chips, and while some of it is just his taste, I can tell that control issues also come into play. He wants to be independent, and for a kid, sometimes the only control you can have is what you’re eating. Rejecting things that your parents want you to eat, even though you might like them, can give kids a huge sense of power. So my goal is always to make sure there’s no power struggle over food. I don’t want Jake to grow up with the food issues I have. If that means he lives on pasta and bread for a few years, he’ll be fine, really! And then when he starts to get curious about new foods his mind will hopefully be open to them.

 My husband, on the other hand, seems to think that the solution is to dish everything out for Jake, and just put it in front of him and tell him to eat it. I don’t see how that helps in the long run. What happens when we’re not there to watch over what he’s eating? What happens when he’s set loose in a college dining hall? Sure, we could make a stand and demand that Jake try everything we put in front of him and eat a certain amount of vegetables every day. But that only helps when he’s actually in front of us. It doesn’t teach him how to eat when we’re not there.

Sometimes, however, I have to admit that I’m not seeing any progress. And I have to remind myself that my tastes didn’t change until I was in my early twenties. It was then that I discovered I love wheat bread, blueberries, zucchini, and avocado. That I didn’t need to pile a pound of hard boiled egg, cheese, and croutons on top of lettuce to enjoy a salad. And I really think it happened so late for me because I was often in food wars with my parents. They were very healthy eaters who were not equipped to deal with a daughter who only wanted sugar and bread. I dug my heels in and steadfastly refused to try new things for years and years, and I can tell you I wasn’t even thinking about the foods when I was making those decisions. I was thinking only about who had the power and control If I hadn’t been so hardheaded I might’ve tried a lot of things a lot earlier.

For now, my husband seems willing to give in and go with my no pressure method, if only because he admits that I know Jake better than he does (because he’s basically a male version of me). And as with most things, I just hope I’m not screwing my children up completely. Only time will tell.