My daughter turned nine this month. For her birthday dinner she requested sushi. She ate one bite of salmon nigiri, a handful of vegetable sushi, and her weight in edamame. She calls herself a “sushi lover” now.
I sat there thinking about the fact that at six she wouldn’t eat anything that wasn’t beige. Kids really do change.
My son, who turns seven next month, remains committed to his position. He keeps saying he wants to eat fish. If we ride by a fish shop - which is a common occurrence in this country - he inevitably inquires about when I will “let him have fish.” But when I put fish in front of him, he completely loses interest. I’m choosing to count “wants to eat fish” as progress and moving on.
We did the sticker chart.
I introduced it with too much enthusiasm, which is a mistake I’ve made before. I explained the system, showed him the chart, showed him the prize at the end - a small Lego set he’d been wanting. He was very into the concept. He asked how many stickers for the Lego. I said ten.
Sticker one: he tried a piece of broccoli. Not his first time actually eating broccoli, but the first time he remembers eating it. Eight minutes of encouragement, but he did it. Chewed it, swallowed, made a face, got his sticker. He was delighted by the sticker.
Sticker two: he tried a piece of chicken that was not from the approved nugget brand. This was significant. He chewed it slowly and declared it “not good but okay,” accompanied by a sideways thumbs-up hand wiggle (his own sign language for kinda ok/maybe good). Sticker.
Then things got complicated.
Sticker three attempt: roasted sweet potato, small bite. He refused. Made a face that I could only describe as “forced to eat venomous creature.” Asked if he could get a sticker for eating extra crackers. I said no. He cried. No sticker that night.
The following nights he would attempt the try, gag with the conviction of a footballer taking a dive, and then argue about whether that counted. I genuinely cannot tell if it’s real.
It became a negotiation every single dinner. What counts as a try? Does touching it to his tongue count? What if he chews but doesn’t swallow?
By week three the chart had become a source of more dinnertime stress than we’d had before, which is saying something. He was focused entirely on sticker acquisition strategy rather than actually engaging with the food. He tried things not to learn about them but to get the sticker. And on nights when he’d decided he wasn’t going to try anything, the existence of the chart made it worse - now there was a visible thing he wasn’t earning.
We got to seven stickers over about five weeks. We haven’t added one in two weeks. The chart is still on the fridge. Neither of us mentions it.
With my daughter, the sticker chart was never really a contest. She looked at it when I introduced it, looked at me, and went back to whatever she was doing. No negotiation, no engagement, no interest. Her brother had spent weeks developing a sticker acquisition strategy. She hadn’t even acknowledged the game was being played.
Week two was when I understood why.
The kids have a bedtime routine - we read together, then her brother gets tucked in, after which she gets about forty minutes with me and my wife. No brother, no competition, just quiet snuggles. That night she started to cry during our quiet time. She said she was hungry, and her tummy hurt. We tried to talk it through calmly - she needed to eat the food when it was on the table, that was the deal. She knew that. She said she wanted to like more foods. She wanted to be able to try things. But even the thought of unfamiliar food made her feel physically sick before she even got close to it. It wasn’t something she wanted to do; for her, it felt like her body just wouldn’t let her.
I ended up sneaking her a granola bar after we tucked her in. I’m not proud of it, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t.
That was the night I stopped trying to out-stubborn her on food. You can’t negotiate with a reflex. The sticker chart, the one bite rule, the hiding vegetables - none of it was going to work on something that was happening before her brain even got involved. I didn’t know what would work instead. But I knew that wasn’t it.
My daughter watched the whole sticker chart experiment with the detached interest of someone who had already decided it didn’t apply to her. She was right. It didn’t.
Next I’m going to try something called the Division of Responsibility. The basic idea: parents decide what food is served and when, kids decide whether to eat it and how much. You stop pressuring entirely. You stop negotiating. You just put the food out.
I am skeptical.
But I’m willing to try anything once. And apparently twice. And apparently as many times as it takes.