Picky, Picky

(*It occurs to me that I am blogging a LOT this month...I wonder why the change?)

It appears that I am in the process of raising one of every mother's nightmare: The Picky Eater. My wonderful, adorable son, Nathan, is one of the pickiest eaters I have ever encountered. He has a veeeerrry short list of foods of which he will partake, including such healthy staples as chicken nuggets, fries, hot dogs, chips and pizza. But only cheese pizza. He won't eat peanut butter and jelly, cheeseburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches (my favorite), or tacos that are put together as tacos, meaning he may eat the separate parts of a taco but not if they are touching. He hardly eats anything involving ground beef, and he will only sometimes eat unprocessed chicken, like grilled or baked chicken breasts. The only "vegetable" he will eat is corn, and that is rare. He does like some fruit, like apples, grapes, and bananas, so he does get a little produce. This is a frustrating situation to me, because I am constantly worrying about what I am cooking for supper and whether or not he will eat it. BTW, the answer to that most days is "NO." I even went so far as to try to make chicken tenders like they do in restaurants, breaded and fried, and he took one look at them, and cried "I don't like that chicken!!" He then ran to his room in tears. I nearly came unglued. After a million and one nights of him telling me he wants chicken for supper, I go through all that trouble to try and duplicate the chicken tenders he gobbles down whenever we go out to eat, and he won't even taste them!! Heartbroken, I tell you.

The kicker is, this is really all my own fault. When he was a baby and just starting to eat table food, he used to get really irritable around 5:00 in the afternoon. So, in order to get a little peace, I would fix him some chicken nuggets and finger food veggies and some cheese and sit him in his high chair to eat while I made the "real" grown-up supper. Because of this, he never got exposed to other types of food when he was that age, and a habit was born. Now, because of this limited exposure, and also I'm sure because of the part of his personality that makes him super-resistant to ANY new experience, Mr. Picky is here to stay. I have recently been trying to break this habit. He can pick what he wants for breakfast, and on the days he is home at lunchtime, he can pick what he wants to eat for lunch. When he goes to school, pack him something, and he eats what he wants. Most of the time, he eats just about everything I pack, which is typically ham, cheese, a fruit cup, and some kind of cracker like cheez-its or something. Sometimes I put a yogurt or something sweet in for "dessert." I really try hard to keep his lunches on the healthy side, but I am pretty limited in my choices. And then comes supper time. I have been trying to plan meals a week at a time, and I find that when I do that, I spend less at the store, and we don't eat out as much because there isn't a question of what we should have for supper. But every week during the planning phase, I am faced with the dilemma of what I should plan that Nathan will eat. We certainly aren't going to have chicken nuggets and fries or pizza every night of the week, and that's all he wants, so what should I do??? I have been doing the "If you don't want to eat what we are having, then you don't eat at all" approach, and so he has not had supper in about a week and a half. He doesn't get any snacks in the evenings, and no milk before bed (as is his habit). He can only have water to drink if he doesn't eat. I had been hoping when I started doing this that he would break down and start eating, but he seems perfectly happy to skip supper most nights. It seems he has this stubborn streak...can't imagine where it came from.

The problem is that I feel like I'm being mean. I think Phil thinks I'm being mean. He doesn't understand why we can't let him have a hot dog when I have spent 45 minutes cooking a healthy meal that he would probably like if he would just TASTE IT! I am past the point of making him try a bite of a new food, because that ended in tears and frustration for both me and him more times than not. One time, he almost had to go to bed at 6:00 because I wanted him to eat a single green bean and he refused. I turn into someone I don't like very much when I try to get him to eat something he doesn't want to try. I just don't know if I am doing the right thing here. He is growing, he has energy, and he is healthy, but something about a 4 year old skipping supper every night screams WRONG to me. I have justified this to myself to the hilt, repeating things like "This isn't a restaurant, it's home. When we go out to eat, he can have whatever he wants, but when we are here or at someone else's house, he needs to learn to eat what is offered." I also don't want him to think of me as some sort of short-order cook. I knew a lady when we lived in New Hampshire who used to cook 4 separate meals every night depending on what each person in her house wanted to eat. And her kids were teenagers, for crying out loud. Perfectly capable of using a microwave if they wanted something different! I swore that was never going to happen to me. By God, my kids would eat what I fixed or else!! That was before Nate was even eating baby food though. Things look a little different these days.

One of my friends keeps reminding me of her nephew, who is now 19 or 20, who used to eat only chicken patties when he was young. Lunch and dinner, every day, chicken patties. He grew up perfectly healthy, and now loves all kinds of crazy foods. She tells me to breathe and stay calm, this too shall pass. My question that I am sending out to all my readers who have small kids or used to have small kids, is what do I do in the meantime? Do I continue on with what I am doing, or do I start a different approach? Let him eat chicken and fries no matter what the rest of us are having (and God love her, Amy will eat whatever we put in front of her)? Someone at work (who doesn't have kids) said she heard you should continue to offer the kid the same plate of food that he refuses to eat until such time as he becomes so hungry that he won't turn it down. THAT seems truly harsh to me, and rest assured I would never be able to do it. Does anyone else have this problem with their kid? If so, what do you do? Fellow Moms, I need some guidance here. Please help!