I rushed back from work, turning down two invitations to go out for a drink (very tempted), in order to prepare for Artichoke-Friday. This had taken on the air of a pagan ritual. The chosen ones were crouching on their sacrificial plate. I had four cookery books at the ready. I chose the simplest option. Chop off the stem, pick off the outer leaves, trim the top and plunge into boiling salted water. 25 minutes later it was D-day. When I took them out I had to squeeze out the water which rather took the glamour out of the artichoke - reducing it to the status of any old boiled vegetable.
Freddie was enthusiastic. There was a generous knob of butter on his plate and he joined in the dipping of the leaves. In fact butter was crucial to the whole thing. There was no retching , no tears and no arguments. He happily sucked the butter off the artichoke and scraped a little bit of the flesh with his teeth and only grimaced when he bit into the heart. As a challenge to eat butter it was a resounding success. In terms of vegetable consumption a rather more modest achievement...
Hi Charlotte, Loved the Blog! I too read about the boy who only ate jam sandwiches. My mother (who is a nurse) also had a little girl who only ate chocolate and she was seriously ill.
ReplyDeleteI have a food phobic son (Benjamin, 5) who for 6 months of his life only ate dry bread. Slightly better now, he will accept fish fingers, bread/toast with butter, fruit compot, and pasta (BIG breakthrough). He won't eat meat, vegetables, fruit, cakes, biscuits, cheese, yoghurt, ham, ice cream... the list goes on. He used to visit a psychologist.. but nothing changed so I gave up.
I mash up carrots and onions and 'hide' them in the pasta, but if he spots something, that's the end of my little game.
Another small breakthrough came after he started going to the school cantine in September (nothing like a bit of peer pressure)... anyhow he ate grated raw carrot ... well 2 tiny strands, but it was a start. He only has bread a water normally. and he will sometimes eat one or two teaspoons of this at dinner time. he only has bread a water normally.
I think the French start the kids young just eating what adults eat but in smaller amounts... they don't seem to panic like we Brits do, fussing over baby rice and porridge. In fact baby rice etc is rare here, and many children cut their first teeth at 4 months chewing on stale baguette crusts. Also they go to restaurents from an early age where they eat adult food, so are exposed to much more very quickly.
I guess it's cultural, Chinese and Japanese children are happily eating raw fish, rice and meat from the start. And in general, they have no dairy products in their diets.
Having said that, I know other French children who are fussy. And the French do have a worrying fixation with adding lots of sugar to many products (chocolate to baby milk etc etc).
Anyhow HTH. You are not alone. I have been assured that difficult children WILL change... just don't bribe them, for orce them, always put something on their plate that they won't eat (maybe one day they will) and if they do try something new, give it to them everyday so they don't forget that they like it.
xx
i think growing big vegies is realy relaxing. (r)
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