I have three children who were all raised under the same roof by the same two parents. Yet, their varying degrees of fussiness could not be any more different from one another. As a foodie and chef, I clearly have plenty of “new eats” around for the kids to try. Meals of various ethnic origins are commonplace in our kitchen. Exotic, or certainly adventurous foods are often on our table. Fiddleheads, Brussel sprouts, parsnips, gooseberries, rhubarb, the list goes on…
I’ve always told my kids that I will never force them to eat something they don’t want – but that they should always at least give it a try. The argument being, if they had never tried some of their favourite foods for the first time, how would they have ever known they were their favourites or that they even liked them?
While I could go on about my younger two who somewhat, sort of adopt this mantra – I really wanted to share how amazed I am by how my oldest, Emily, has taken this to heart. The girl will try, and often like, anything I send her way. My 10 year old will proudly pound back pickled herring, salmon sashimi, or baba ghanoush with the best of them. Artichokes? Lox? Vichyssoise? Check. Check. And Check.
It’s not so much that I think we did anything different for Emily than we did for our other two kids. It’s just she decided, whatever doesn’t hurt you, is surely worth tasting. I’ll often whip together a dish, and my kids will go running, insisting that sure they like all the ingredients but are too scared of the finished product – and then in walks Emily pining for a spoon of the dish du jour.
I’m so proud of her for that – and I wish I could claim that we had anything to do with it. But I don’t think we did – she’s just awesome like that.
How about you – any adventurous eaters among your fussy lot?
I love that picture!!! I have a pretty adventurous eater on my hands – and I’m happy for it. At 2.5 – his fave vegetable is asparagus and he’ll toss back basically anything I put in front on him….except for cheese! I know – bizarre!
My oldest and youngest are fantastic eaters!
My middle – fussiest eater I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. It’s tough to feed that one…
Amazing isn’t it. So does it go to show that we really are born with certain charater traits or has she just become adventurous? Either way, good for her!!
she is awesome like that! but she’s pretty awesome in general!