I want to talk about dinner. Specifically, how it’s become the part of my day I dread most.
I have two kids, and both of them used to eat everything - I have the photos to prove it. And then, at some point with each of them, a switch flipped.
Now I make three different dinners some nights. I’m trying to figure out how to stop doing that without anyone going to bed hungry.
My son is six. The switch flipped just a few months ago. Now every item on his plate gets a detailed inspection before being rejected without a taste. Or worse, becomes a bargaining chip: “Dad, how many bites do I have to eat to get something else?”
If I stand firm, he’ll take the smallest bites physically possible, complain about how disgusting it is, and then - rarely - say “this is pretty good” and eat at least half of it. More often he takes those two tentative bites and simply refuses unless promised something else. Yes, I’ve used dessert as a lure. I’m not proud of it. I just want him to eat.
His current approved list: pasta (plain - no sauce, no butter, nothing), chicken nuggets from one specific brand (not McDonalds), Fries only from McDonalds, apples peeled and sliced into exactly eight pieces, plain crackers, yogurt pouches (not the healthy kind), and cheese cubes or sticks. Sliced cheese is apparently ‘gross.’
That’s pretty much it.
Last month he ate bean quesadillas every single day for two weeks. Asked for them. Loved them. Then one day declared them disgusting and hasn’t touched one since. Just like that, gone.
What makes it harder is that he cycles. Some weeks he’ll actually try things - not like them, maybe spit them out, make a face - but he’ll put them in his mouth. Other weeks he looks at anything unfamiliar like the very suggestion is ridiculous. I have no idea what determines which week it is. Mood, sleep, something that happened at school. Every strategy I try feels like shooting at a moving target, blindfolded. Did it work, or did I just get lucky with the timing?
My daughter is eight, and she’s the one who really got this whole thing started.
She used to eat everything too. Spaghetti with meat sauce was a favorite - she’d ask for it, get excited about it, brag to her friends about her dad’s spaghetti and breadsticks, the whole thing. Then one day she asked for it, I made it, set the plate down in front of her, and she looked at it like I’d handed her cat food. Moved the noodles around. Didn’t eat any of it.
She’d still eat the breadsticks. But only if they were completely plain. No butter, no garlic, no cheese. Just bread. The spaghetti, it turned out, was also fine - as long as it had no sauce, no meat, nothing on it at all. Just noodles. Plain. The thing she used to beg for, stripped down until it was as bland as it could get, and that’s what she’d eat. One more rule: you cannot call it pasta. You cannot call it spaghetti. It is noodles. This is not negotiable. Call it the wrong thing, and I’m listening to her stomach grumble all night because she would rather starve than eat something called spaghetti.
A friend - whose daughter is ten years older than mine - told me early on: “She’ll eat when she needs to.” I clung to that like a life preserver. It was hard to believe when my daughter’s entire diet consisted of white rice and Bifi sticks. (If you’re not familiar: processed meat in a little plastic sleeve, smell included.) Lately she’s expanded to bagels with cream cheese and jelly - both toppings are mandatory, as either one alone is apparently a grave insult.
My friend’s daughter is now an adult who eats everything. So I know it can get better. But right now, “it gets better” feels like something people say to stop you from losing your mind at the dinner table.
Apparently the quesadilla thing is a Thing. I’ve been lurking in picky eating groups on Facebook - there are a lot of them, which is either comforting (we’re not alone) or alarming (there are so many of us, collectively losing it over dinner). They call it a “food jag.” Kid latches onto something, eats it obsessively, then drops it cold. Totally normal, developmentally. Great. The quesadillas are gone. We’re left with spaghetti noodles. And I’m left with a pantry full of canned black beans that they won’t eat.
I’ve started tracking what I’ve tried with both of them. Partly to stay sane. Partly because their pediatrician asked for more than a shrug and “I don’t know?” when he asked what they actually eat.
So I’m going to write it down here. What we’ve tried, what happened, what the research says, and what our life actually looks like.
I’m not a nutritionist. I’m not a feeding therapist. I’m just a parent who has made three different dinners in one night more times than I care to admit, and who is desperately trying to figure out how to stop doing that without anyone going to bed hungry. We’re left with pasta noodles and crackers and the memory of a quesadilla.
First up: hiding vegetables. I’ve been doing it.
I’ll tell you how that’s going in the next post.
Spoiler: it’s… going.