I was extremely picky growing up. For years, according to my parents, I would only eat American cheese and bread sandwiches with no other ingredients. I say “according to my parents” because I don’t really remember those years, but I do remember the nightly battles we had with them trying to get me to eat any significant amount of dinner. We’d negotiate over exactly how many bites and how many peas I had to eat, and many nights ended with everyone in the family but me leaving the table and me being told that I could leave the table once I finished my food. I often sat there for what felt likes hours (but may have just been minutes, I think I was like four) and I also remember throwing away my food and claiming to have eaten it on at least one occasion.
Eventually my parents gave up trying to get me to try new foods or eat ones I did not like. They would not cook me meals I did like if I did not like whatever was being served that day, but I was allowed to simply not eat - although I was warned that I could not have snacks after dinner, it was dinner or nothing. Some years later, I started eating a wide variety of foods, and while I do think I am still fundamentally picky - there is narrow range of foods I like, and I prefer to eat only a small handful of them obsessively at any given time, i.e., same foodsing - I now can and will eat almost anything if I have to, to be polite in a public setting, or if it is the only food available, etc, etc.
I am not unmarked by this, though. I have string anxiety around food. Every night I need to grab a snack before bed, because if I do not, I am too anxious to sleep, afraid I might wake up hungry. I am too anxious to discuss what to have for dinner in front of my kids, needing a safe environment alone with my wife where I feel comfortable expressing negative opinions about food. I often do not feel comfortable eating with someone else in the room unless they are eating too. I am also overweight, which is almost certainly caused by many different things from my biology to my disability, but overeating due to food anxiety is also likely a significant factor. While I am unsure whether my eventual broad palate is the result of my parents enforcing of me trying foods, it’s hard to imagine my food anxieties aren’t, right?
It should be noted that although I do not have an official diagnosis of autism, my parents have admitted to me they were told by teachers that I was and that I should be evaluated: they refused, being afraid the stigma would hurt me. My kids also do not have any such diagnosis, but we started the evaluation for them, and were told they very likely did based on their tests, but we stopped at the final step, an in person interview, because Roe v. Wade was overturned, and as it is part of the legal justification for HIPPA, we got concerned about the possibility of a future fascist state putting our kids on lists. Although HIPPA has not been challenged yet, given RFK’s attempts to compile lists of people with Autism and ADHD, I think we probably made the right choice. Time will tell.
But as alluded, I now have kids of my own. Both are also quite picky, although in different ways. The older child has only a very narrow list of relatively bland foods they will eat, and while often willing to try new foods, almost always rejects them. My younger child is often willing to try new foods, and is generally willing to eat a much wider variety of foods including highly flavored ones, but also often develops idiosyncratic objections to foods they’ve been eating for years, and slight variations on accepted foods are usually rejected out of hand.
Unlike my parents, we have made relatively little effort to force my kids to eat things. We encourage them to try new foods, and we work with them to find things they like and make things they like. My wife, the hero, often cooks four meals a night, one for each kid, one for me, and one for herself - she is also quite picky. We used to share the cooking duties before I became disabled, but cooking is a task that takes a lot out of me now, like most physical tasks, so I rarely if ever do it now. So she carries the majority of the burden of the family’s pickiness, and we are constantly striving to find meals everyone will eat, but its a major struggle. Moreover, the oldest child has a lot of anxiety about food as well - not as much as me, but enough that we do need to carefully plan ahead to ensure they are okay at family functions or on trips out of the house. This is of course complicated by the discovery me and both kids have Celiacs, meaning most restaurants are straight out.
So are we doing the right thing with our kids? I hope so. But my kids diets so far are quite limited. The older child at least still has food anxiety, they were not spared that by our softer parenting style. My children are also both overweight, despite their pickiness and the struggle to get them to eat. They are not adults yet, but I do sometimes wondering, am I actually doing any better than my parents? Should I have went with their stricter approach? At least then my kids might be willing to eat more food like I am, right?
My mother now openly admits it was a mistake to force me to eat, and they were much more generous with my younger siblings, allowing them to eat snack foods instead of dinner if they did not like what was cooked, and never holding them to bite quotas or forcing them to stay at the table. I broke my parents as a child, and thus won a victory for my younger siblings yet to be born. I think she would probably agree I am making the right choice with my kids. But I do often wonder if I am even right to blame them to begin with for my anxiety, given my oldest kid suffers similar without similar trauma, and if I should actually be lushing a bit harder. But, I also don’t really think I have it in me to force them, and ultimately, I just hope that at the very least, my kids will know that I did the best that I could based off my parents mistakes, even if I make some of my own.
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