Picky Eater 6 Year Old and Picky Eater Hubby!

L.,
Wow! Read my post from October 30...

"Am I crazy or is this someone else's situation too? Hubby eats Dino nuggets or cereal for dinner each night, along with a Healthy Choice meal sometimes in the microwave. I tried to cook dinners a year ago, and my husband never ate them. So rather than waste food I stopped. They were not THAT bad; mostly pretty simple like pasta, chicken, etc. He has never been into food. We don't use our stove/oven now.

OK. But my kids do this now. They are 2 and 3, plus a baby (who is nursing). I make them stuff, and they waste it all. I try to choose healthy things. Veggies, fish sticks (actually we do use the oven there), etc., and I buy fresh fruit or prepared chicken.
Nobody eats anything in this house! Sometimes I get tired of it and do make a nice meal with a few selections. Always wasted."

Hubby sits at TV all the time. I am living your life, it seems. The post was called Family Won't eat. Now the hard part is there is no real solution. But, there are ideas...

First question: is it ok for you what your husband does and you accept this without a fight, comment or anything? In that case as another post suggested I would tell your daughter that your husband is responsible for himself but you are responsible for her still and therefore she needs to eat at least a bit of what you cooked. I put always a tbs of what my younger son doesn't like on his plate and he needs to eat it. Sometimes I have to feed him (5 years) old to get him to eat the vegetables--and then he will eat them. (So try to feed her, she might like to be babied once in a while when it comes to foods she dispices). In all the parenting magazines you read it over and over again that it takes 10-15 times until kids like something.

Another thing I wanted to share with you is that my older son (now 9) used to eat all the green vegetables very well when he was young and once he got to the age of self determination he wouldn't like anything anymore. Now we are back to eating pretty much everything again and now he tells the 5 year old: go ahead and eat it, it tastes good! (Makes me chuckle) So I came to the conclusion that eating dislikes are sometimes temporary and my picky 5 year old will change again around age 8 and have more appreciation for healthy food at about that age again.

Another thing you can read about very often is: cook with her and let her make the choice of what vegetable she would like--empowerment. But on certain things you must accept that she won't like it. My older son hates mushrooms and I have tried to chop it really small put into Lasagna and he still knew that they were mushrooms. So I gave up on the mushrooms. And of course my younger one does not eat them because son #1 is the example.

Good luck!

Perhaps if you and your husband make a big fuss about how good something is...even if you don't really like it, that will get her to try it? Make a plate for hubby, make sure it has at least one thing on it that he likes and ask him to make a big fuss about how good everything is. I did this with my son and green beans. I don't like them...never have. But I still made them and told my son how they were so good and they were my favorite, etc. He never really noticed that I didn't actually eat them. I also kept everything in the kitchen so if I went back for seconds I could scrape a little of the green beans into the trash so it looked like I ate them. It's sneaky I know but when it comes to getting proper nutrition into your kids...I'm ok with sneaky. Also, I've read that our tastebuds change on a regular basis. So what may have tasted terrible to us as kids may taste great as adults. Maybe that angle will convince hubby to at least taste new stuff. With that said, what does the Dr say about your childs overall health? Is there evidence that she's lacking anything? If the Dr says she's healthy...maybe it's not that big of a problem?

My husband doesnt like nor eat veggies, but I told my kids its what their bodies need to grow. As a preschool teacher I taught the food pyramid and this got them into asking parents for a veggie and fruit with each meal (this didnt go over to well with the parents.) She is still young enough to be taught to eat properly. Make her take a look at the food pyramids on the sides of cereal boxes and other food products. In order for her body to reach it's potential she needs to be eating a variety of foods. Is she into playing sports or growing tall enough to ride a roller coasters these can be motivators. Tell her Daddy is a full grown man and when she is a full grown woman she can then decided what she will put into her body. You've got many more years of power struggles, not just with food. Good luck...we're all in our shoes :)

What a challenge! I am very lucky that my son is an adventurous eater, but we have a rule that you have to taste everything on your plate. If you don't like it you don't have to eat it. If a vegetable is not liked, it's baby carrots, cucumber sticks, grape tomatoes or pea pods that is substituted. Frankly, I'm not a big hot veggie eater and hate mushy veggies. We have a lot of salads. I also "hide" veggies in food. A can of tomatoes in the mac n cheese. Zucchini bread and muffins. A can of tomatoes in the spaghetti sauce (extra chunky...yum.) You get the idea. I also found that telling my son it's okay for him to like food I don't. He seemed to think if I didn't like it, he couldn't. Now he eats stuff that is really good for him that I don't care for. Also with cooked veggies, add a teaspoon of sugar to the water for "steamed"/boiled veggies. This brings out the natural sweetness in them.