When our youngest son was small, there weren’t many foods that he would eat. To say that he was a picky eater, would have been an understatement. I encouraged him to try new foods; I read books written by experts…the people I call “Child Whisperers”….but those authors have never met Sam.
Then one day at dinner time, something clicked. Could have been the commercials with the preschooler singing the “blue box blues”…..could have been the special Cat In The Hat bowl with the matching fork….it could have been that suddenly everything was centered in the Cosmos…I was having visions of Carl Sagan.
Collectively, we held our breaths as the special bowl was placed in front of him. He picked up one piece of macaroni on the special fork and examined it closely. “Hmmm” he said, “these look like socks!” (He was 3 at the time.) He carefully put a macaroni sock on each tine of the fork, and then put the fork in his mouth. We waited for the usual theatrics. To our amazement he said, “These are good! How come you haven’t told me about this before?” It was a “slap hand to forehead moment.”
Years later, he can put away an entire box by himself, if I let him. Now if I could just get him to use a napkin instead of his sleeve!
If you eat too much Mac And Cheese you turn yellow…. true story
When I was a kid, my idea of a sub with everything on it meant – turkey on a buttered hoagy with salt and pepper! Now I’ll eat just about anything. My friend’s son is 7 and he won’t even eat corn or carrots! That’s a diffucult pill to swallow for his mother, a child care and nutrition expert. There’s something built into kids that makes them crave processed homogenized foods – but I think by age 18 most grow out of it.
This was funny and cute. My children were picky eaters, too, until I “introduced” mac ‘n’ cheese, but they didn’t do anything cute like put the noodle socks on the tines. They just wolfed it down. Maybe it’s that great orange color. My daughter became such a mac ‘n’ cheese hound that she’s had to go cold turkey — or cold cheese, I guess it would be. Now, she’s a vegan.