My kids the food snobs

I am heating up my soup when one of the floor mates asks me how my weekend was and if I had done anything fun. I told her that the family went to Dig In Indiana on Sunday. She looked at me as if I slapped her in the face while I was driving over her children in a tank.

Her “Why would you waste your money ,kids don’t eat that way.”

Me “Mine do, they like to try new things.”

Her “You are one of those people that turn their kids into food snobs where normal food isn’t good enough for them.” She said eating her Ramen out of the Styrofoam container, because that is normal food for a 30+ woman!

So what is normal food for a kid? Was she referring to the typical peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese and chicken nugget diet that most of us feed our kids regularly because we don’t think they will like anything else?

We give kids too little credit when it comes to food. I myself have done that with my children. We think they won’t eat certain things so we don’t even bother to see if they will try them. Then they are out somewhere and they try it and they like it and we are shocked.

I had a conversation with my gym buddy who couldn’t believe all the things the kids tried at Dig In and also ate in general. Her son is young and she wants him to be a well rounded eater like my little food snobs. So she asked for a few tips. Every child is different but this is what I shared:

The first step to getting a kid to expand past the typical kid safe meals is exposure. The more you let your kids explore food options the more likely they are to try new things. They may not like them but at least they gave it a try. I took my kids to the market and told them to pick out something they had never had before. Kailey brought us asparagus so we tried it as a family that night. We don’t eat it every night but we have had it a few times since then, a small victory for mom!

The second thing that I found helpful was involving the kids in meal planning and preparation. When a child has a say and a part in meals they will also try new things. They girls said they wanted to try ratatouille. So we made it together. It wasn’t our favorite thing but there were elements that they liked. They liked the squash so we took some of that the next night and coated it with cornmeal then pan fried it, they all liked it.

On that same note find certain food types that kids like and play off that. If you have pasta eater try new things with pasta each week. In our house it was spaghetti or lasagna every other week. Then we tried a few different dishes and the family loved them! One was as simple as tossing some cheese tortellini with a jar of sundried tomatoes. Takes less than 15 minutes to prepare and costs less than $6 for the meal and the family loves it.

Next don’t give up. Just because kids don’t like something the first time they try it doesn’t mean they won’t love it the next time. Kids’ tastes come and go just like ours do, even their favorite meals may not appeal to them all the time.

And finally don’t over whelm them with too many new things at once. Easing new things into kids diets work much better then stating “We are never going through the drive through again so eat these beats and bean sprouts”. Nothing will start rebellion quicker than too many changes at once.

Am I am expert? Hell no, I am still learning as I go. And I am using my kids to help me learn, some days I listen better than others. I just can’t get over that one kid not liking broccoli, how can she not like broccoli? But for the most part I am listening!

And for the big question: Are my kids food snobs? No, they like those kid staples just like the other kids but they happen to like to try new things too. But I will never feed them Ramen from a Styrofoam cup!