Browsing Tag: cooking

At dinnertime, when my older children were younger, any food that looked out of the ordinary or different would immediately provoke a comment such as “I don’t like that” or “can I have cereal instead?”  Of course we would always respond “you’ve never even tried it so how do you know you don’t like it” and then a battle would happen with frustrated parents and crying kids.  Since I like to cook and often tried new recipes this was an ongoing occurrence.  One day we got smart and  introduced the “no thank you bite.”  If someone didn’t want to try something new, or even some of the suspicious looking foods I fixed that weren’t new, they would have to take a “no thank you bite.”  One bite and then if they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to eat it-no snide comments or probing questions asked. At first it was kind of a battle to get them to go along with it but as they tried things and said they didn’t like them, we just thanked them for trying the item and let the matter drop.  The process became much easier, and the battles and coaxing stopped and we found that about 90% of the time they ended up liking the new food they tried.  This became reinforcing, so it was no longer difficult to get them to try something new and of course as other kids came along this system was already in place and followed their siblings example.  My kids became adventurous eaters even trying new and different things in restaurants, sometimes trying things that looked even suspicious to me!  I knew we had been successful with this when one day a friend of mine observed “your kids will eat anything!”