The fruit basket is always open, even in those last excruciating 10 mins before dinner is served. If a kid cares enough to peel a banana I’m not going to stop 'em.
(For under 4’s) Try everything, but if you don’t like it, no big deal, just don’t eat, there’s always a big ovalmaltine before bed to fill you up. The next time they see it, adults don’t mention first refusal, maybe this time yes, maybe no, no big deal, there’s always ovomaltine.
Shh, you’re undermining the entire advertising industry. Billions of $ and millions of jobs rely on advertising agencies being able to persuade people that advertising will magically improve their product.
Branding definitely affects taste. That was the effect behind the whole “new Coke” debacle. What people preferred in blind taste tests they were outraged when it was branded a replacement for the Coke they liked less.
How many people angry about how this campaign advocates telling white lies to kids participate in more widely spread cultural practices that involve lying to children, like those involving various magical holiday gift-givers?
Aside from the pedagogical applications, I’m fond of the lies-we-tell-to-children(the concept, not the empirical collection of lies we in fact tell to children, that’s a very mixed bag) because it’s epistemologically interesting, sort of a colleague to the use of ‘models’ among adults:
The various naive models of knowledge don’t really have a provision for cases where believing and/or treating as true false things makes you closer to the truth; but for those of us not blessed with access to the realm of the forms or unlimited simulation time it’s clearly the case that some(but only some, attempting to come up with rules for distinguishing those from other falsehoods is an interesting exercise) falsehoods are either valuable steps on the road to truth or able to get you good-enough answers to empirical problems.
Needless to say, this particular, uh, ‘flavor’, of lie doesn’t seem to fall into those categories…
Or parents? I’ve been criticized for how direct I am with the kids sometimes. When I told them how rainbows are created by light actually fracturing I was told that I shouldn’t give them a literal explanation so as to better preserve their sense of wonder and magic. As if light breaking into a billion colors isn’t fucking magical!?! The example given was the fucking angels painted the sky bullshit. As if that is something they would naturally assume and therefore to be “preserved”. I think peoples’ assumptions about how children perceive the world are 100% based on the lies their parents told them, so they assume it was a natural progression instead of ignorance and lies.
I thought it was a magical symbol created by God as a sign of God’s promise not to drown us all again (No representations or warranties are made about personal smitings or other methods of genocide. Other deities may be available; worshipping them before the Lord Your God may lead to a personal smiting and/or genocide by some other method than drowning. Your remedies for breach of this covenant are limited. Terms and conditions apply).
Ugh. How did you do that? We made a lot of our own food (veg and fruit pouches excepted), fed her lots of veggies, never pushed anything… and she won’t eat anything spicy or most vegetables at home. We just keep putting them on her plate, asking her once to try a “nibble nibble” and saying she doesn’t have to eat it if she doesn’t want to. It drives me nuts.
She eats all kinds of good and varied things at daycare. Thank you peer pressure.
As for the “ranch frosting”… (1) hidden valley ranch is disgusting. (2) she would taste it and say “this is yucky frosting! I want chocolate frosting.” (3) hidden valley ranch is disgusting.
We haven’t tried homemade ranch. She loves all things dairy, so I think we’ll do that this weekend.
As @enkidoodler said, we never fed them any processed food and prepared everything from scratch. They went straight from boob to sweet potatoes, squash and eggs (two a morning, each!). I didn’t even bother to put it through a ricer or food mill, just cut up into cubes and baked. This way they also learned to feed themselves and developed hand/eye skills earlier.
The spicy thing was a bit of an accident, really. I was eating a bowl of extremely spicy Thai food while the youngest (twins who were about 1.5 at the time) were eating next to me. They kept reaching and begging for some, so I gave them each the tiniest bit of sauce on the tip of their tongues. They didn’t flinch and were eating fistfuls moments later. They went through a period from, like 4-8 when they wouldn’t eat spicy except Cholula, but now they’re both self-medicating ;~)
I think it’s also important to note that they were given ZERO refined sugar until they were 3, and then very, very small, regulated amounts very rarely. Same with simple starch/fat combos like mac & cheese or buttered noodles (never!!!). No juice, too. Only water so they learn to actually hydrate when thirsty. It’s honestly insane how much sugar the average kid is introduced to before they even develop their ability to really taste. I know a lot of parents use sugar as a lure to get them to eat healthy foods, but I think it’s counter-productive (like lying about why the sky is blue). They never learn to truly love whole foods, just tolerate them.
Honestly, though I think it comes down to the kid ultimately. We really have very little control as parents and it ultimately comes down to the human we were gifted to live with.
