To all you parents out there holding a daily battle of wits with your 3 year old who is only eating blue food this week, liquids, or food that doesn’t touch other food, hold onto your hats. I am here to tell you, it doesn’t get any better.
“What? I was told it’s just a phase! My pediatrician assured me that little Timmy would grow out of it and be a healthy child with a voracious appetite for a variety of foods!”
Isn’t that what you’re thinking? Well your pediatrician lied. Sort of.
By the time he’s a strapping teen, Little Timmy will definitely develop a voracious appetite, hungry nearly every waking second of the day, but the variety? Ha! My teen has to be even pickier than the most picky in the toddler set. And I know a toddler that will only eat pudding. Chocolate.
I should preface this by saying, this is not necessarily gospel. I have one child who pretty much tries everything and will at least take a few bites of her food before she flings unpalatable cuisine across the room. She loves veggies and fruits (and anything that even has a hint of sugar). She was never really picky as a toddler though; in fact, I don’t even think she went through any of those food jags.
The other one…not so much.
When he was a toddler would only eat pasta for awhile, chicken nuggets for another few months, and even went through an “only crab and lobster please” phase. (Let me tell you how expensive that was.) The only acceptable veggie was broccoli and he would only eat the “tree” part. I attempted to grind up other veggies to cleverly disguise in his food and one night he held up a minuscule piece of green fleck that was hidden in meatloaf, demanding to know what it was. He wouldn’t eat pizza for nearly a decade because of the oregano, claiming it was “icky”.
He will take a baked potato out of the skin and mash it up on his plate with butter to eat, but God forbid you give him actual mashed potatoes. And so on and so forth. And in ten years, not much has changed other than his preferences.
Right now, his dietary repertoire consists of cereal for breakfast (only Fruit Loops, Apple Jacks, and PLAIN Cheerios will do), a poppy seed bagel with cream cheese (don’t dare suggest he use butter when the cream cheese is CRUNCHY , what ever the hell that means) for lunch, and then an additional lunch of a poppy seed roll with roast beef, pepperoni, lettuce and ranch dressing. I really hope he never has to go through drug testing because his opium level would be off the charts with all the poppy seeds he consumes in a 24 hour period.
Then he’s sniffing around for dinner around 4; we have to hold him off by throwing some English muffins with peanut butter his way till the rest of us are hungry. Yeah, he is addicted to carbs. He has a bright future on some 600 pound show somewhere when middle age metabolism catches up with him and he suddenly doesn’t look like an emaciated child from some third world country anymore.
Since we usually end up going somewhere to eat for dinner (I can’t cook and hubby can be a tad lazy…don’t judge), he will inevitably complain about our restaurant choice 9 times out of 10. Within minutes of consuming dinner, he’s pouring cereal again; we go through a gallon of milk in two days. Or scooping ice cream. He’s under the impression that dessert is an entitlement.
Well, he’s gonna starve today.
“But why?” You ask. “Are you out of milk?”
Why? Well, I haven’t gotten to the grocery store in days. There’s milk from the convenience store, but the only cereals are Honey Nut Cheerios, Raisin Bran, Life, Kix, and Corn Flakes. You know, the semi healthy stuff. He has already announced “there’s no good cereals in the house” five times already and it’s not even noon.
There’s a bagel left but he won’t eat that. Wanna know why? It’s “misshapen” and “ugly”. Um, what??? Who cares what it looks like? I knew teens were superficial, but hell, this takes the cake.
I offer him the English muffins, but he claims they are “hard as a rock”. Translation: stale. Impossible since I bought them on Wednesday…unless of course, he left the bag open and that’s very possible. That’s the other thing…I throw out so much stale and uneaten food that Sally Struthers would have an angina attack.
What about the roast beef? Surely there is roast beef! Well yes, there is! But there’s either no rolls (and heaven forbid we use actual bread) or no pepperoni and we can’t have a sandwich like that! What kind of mother are you, expecting your kid to eat something outside his comfort zone? You should run to the store immediately and purchase all his favorite foods!
I’ll tell you what kind of mother I am…apparently bad because I’m staying here and watching him forage through the overstocked cabinets for food.
Heck, maybe he will find a cracker with his name on it.