Peter is a picky eater, always has been. His mainstays are peanut butter and honey tortillas (yes, you read that right), bananas, and applesauce. The quintessential white diet. He has and does eat other foods, but tortillas are what he begs for. Even if we are offering him something that he has eaten before, he’ll whine and cry and carry on like we’re trying to poison him. “I just want a tortilla!”
Peter's mainstays: Tortillas with peanut butter and honey. (The nutella is a treat on road trips.)
And yes, I’ve tried sneaking other things into his tortillas. Even the smallest of small dabs of refried beans hidden in the melted cheese, which he does like. He finds it. Then accuses me of poisoning him. Not in those exact words, but you’d think I’d tried to get him to eat cyanide by the way he carries on.
We’ve tried saying taking it or leave it, you’re not getting anything else. He’ll leave it and go hungry.
Or he’ll bide his time and sneak something else once we finally turn our back. He’s a main reason we put a lock on our pantry door. (He figured out a long time ago how to unlock it, but it was nice while it lasted.)
My first two children both came out of the womb eating like champs. We have pictures of Conner at five eating a steamed head of broccoli like it was an ice cream cone. Olivia pops grape tomatoes in her mouth like candy. I knew Peter’s picky eating wasn’t due to his environment. When we got his diagnosis of apraxia, it all seemed to make sense: textures; sensory integration; temperature sensitivity. This wasn’t just about food. I learned about resistant eaters, and as bad as Peter’s eating seemed to me, I realized that it was nothing compared to what some parents experience with their special needs children. (Ever hear of Food Therapy?) I picked my battles and simply encouraged foods that (somewhat) made up a whole diet, colorless as they were.
Over time, the lines have blurred somewhat between what is really difficult for Peter to eat — he doesn’t like ice cream, for instance, “Too cold!” — and what he simply doesn’t want to eat. But old habits die hard, and I’ve grown accustomed to accommodating Peter’s eating preferences. I do encourage him to try new things; I will often entice him to just eat one bite by letting him have what he’d really like to eat afterward. No matter that he’d even admit that he liked what I made him try: he’d had his one bite and he was done.
Cue John’s Recent Return from Deployment.
Something must have snapped — I guess those months away gave John fresh eyes when he came home and witnessed Peter’s eating habits anew. John declared No More and with a Take No Prisoners attitude decided that Peter was going to start eating Good Food, or else.
It was a huge, huge milestone when John got Peter to eat a cheeseburger. A half a cheeseburger, mind you. But still. And this was no tasteless fast food, but a plump, juicy cheeseburger seasoned just-so, fresh off the grill.
At least, it was fresh off the grill when we ate. It took Peter two hours to eat his.
But he ate it! This happened before our recent road trip to Kansas. While traveling, we quickly slid back into our usual eating habits. I chose to fight no battles with Peter regarding food (hey, I was on vacation, too) but I also wasn’t always around to make sure that he was at least getting a somewhat well-rounded diet with his preferred white-food choices. By the end of the trip, it was apparent that his health was starting to suffer. John finally spent an evening (while the rest of us were at my cousin’s wedding reception) forcing Peter to eat two baby carrots. They had left the reception early because Peter was pale, exhausted, complaining of a tummy ache, refusing to eat a single morsel from the buffet, and begging relentlessly to just have some wedding cake. And John was still annoyed with him for sneaking and eating an entire bag of cheese earlier in the day. It took two hours, many tears, and cries begging “I just want to go to bed!” but he ate it.
In the past, I have often given him the option of eating what I gave him for dinner or just going to bed, figuring that the experts must be right when they say that a kid will never starve himself. I’m not so sure they’re right with this one. He’s a stubborn fellow — manipulative and sneaky, too. John has decided to play a firm hand with him, and for that I am thankful. I’m not sure I have the stomach for it. No pun intended.
Cue Vigil.
So we had cheeseburgers again last night. And John laid down the law: no substitutions.
I wish I’d gotten a picture of Peter just sitting there, not eating his food: the sullen look on his face is priceless. But I’m choosing to expend as little energy (and attention) as possible on these battles. We all ate our food, I cleared the table and wiped it down around him, then John set hisself down and commenced a vigil.
It’s not very fun, these vigils. And they’re a huge time sucker. But they’re necessary because the minute you turn your back Peter is off and running, which is why it’s so difficult to force him to eat while we’re traveling and visiting friends and family. In fact, during last night’s vigil he made one escape when John left the room for a minute, calling over his shoulder for me to mind that Peter didn’t leave the table. I turned my back to do some dishes and Peter was gone. We found him up in his room, trying to put himself to bed.
Oh, we are mean and cruel parents, we are. We made Peter come back down and sit at the table, telling him he’d be there for as long as it took, but he was going to eat that cheeseburger. Oh, the humanities. I just want to go to bed. I’m so ti-i-i-i-red! Laying his head down on the table and wailing and carrying on like the poor, abused, downtrodden prisoner that he was.
Cue Portal.
John was not to be deterred, and he brought his laptop to the table to help pass the time.
Now, Peter loves electronics in general: computer games; Wii; gameboy; his big brother’s DSi (much to big brother’s consternation). Electronics in moderation are not a bad thing, in my view. But we definitely have to limit them with this fellow. With all of our kids, in fact.
One game he loves to play above all else is Portal, a game John discovered while he was deployed. He took advantage of a free download one weekend, introduced it to Olivia and Peter, and they were hooked.
To me, their liking a game like Portal is very improbable. To quote the website’s description:
“Players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals to maneuvering objects, and themselves, through space.”
Huh, what?
It’s actually quite intellectually challenging, and from my understanding (I’ve never played myself) involves quite a bit of physics. Not my bag, baby. This is a game they only play with daddy, on daddy’s laptop. I didn’t even realize until writing this that the game normally costs $19.95 to download, so kudos to John for getting it free.
So John sits down with his laptop, and we’re telling Peter that as soon as he eats his cheeseburger, he can play Portal. But not to dawdle, or it will be bedtime.
I sort of half-joked to John, “Maybe you and Olivia should just start playing right there in front of him. You know, on the opposite side of the table so he couldn’t see the screen.” Ha-ha, wouldn’t that just be too cruel? John thought so at first, then apparently changed his mind because next time I turn around there they are, setting it up and Olivia is sooo excited, because she thought she’d have to wait until Peter was done with his dinner.
Well, this was just too much for Peter.
“I want to play!”
“Then eat your dinner!”
He slumped back down in his chair, but his eyes flickered onto his cheeseburger for the briefest of moments.
Minutes passed. Peter would slowly start to sneak his way around the table so he could watch. He always got sent back — sometimes not until I happened by and noticed, so engrossed were John and Olivia in their playing. (What is it with men and their ability to tune everything out around them in the name of electronics? If only I had that ability, this blog could go up to the next level, I tell you that.) And then, and then, and then… What’s this I see?
He’s eating! And he likes it! But of course he does! Because he’s had a cheeseburger before!
(If you look very, very closely, you can see a bit of a piece of sauteed squash on his plate. That was just me being hopeful. Eating that wasn’t part of The Deal.) (Truthfully, simply allowing it to stay on his plate is improvement for him.)
Later when it was time to get ready for bed, Peter came by me and I held out my hand for him to give me five. He ran up and gave me a hug instead. He was so happy! And not acting tired at all!
What Does This Have to Do With “Budgets”?
Nothing, yet everything, really.
It takes more energy to deal with picky eaters who don’t simply eat what you put on their plate on a regular basis. It takes more resources to supply picky eaters with food you know they’ll eat — though I must admit that this aspect can actually be money-saving. (It’s almost like having one less mouth to feed when that mouth doesn’t eat much meat.) (And very, very little fresh produce.) It can be difficult to get picky eaters the nutrients that their bodies need, and their health can suffer, making them more prone to cold and exhaustion and every virus that comes their way.
Having a picky eater in the family affects everyone around them: It can have a negative impact on the family dinner experience when someone is always complaining about their food, or trying to get up from the table. The benefits of a family eating together can get swallowed up by the energy consumed by dealing with one person. It’s difficult to go out to eat when you know one person will protest if one or two particular items aren’t offered on a menu. Never mind trying different ethnic restaurants and having different culinary experiences as a family.
Peter is only five. Peter is already five.
He’s still young, but I can totally see how this can go on forever if we let it. I heard two separate stories during our recent trip about kids people know who are in their teens and are still very, very picky eaters. Can you imagine how this is affecting their health? Their social lives? Their opportunities to grow as individuals and experience new things?
We still have a long, long road ahead of us with Peter and eating. He may have to eat a cheeseburger 20, 30 more times before he does so willingly. I’m just so glad that I’m not in this by myself: I regularly get tastes (no pun intended) of what it’s like to be a single parent (albeit with income) for months at a time, and I simply know I would not have the energy to fight this battle consistently on my own.
John will be gone again for the month of August. I don’t know how much I’ll stand ground while he’s gone; I’ll play that by ear. I just know that, years from now, when Peter’s eating sushi and squash and slurping smoothies (and not complaining they’re “too cold!”) I want everyone to know, this didn’t just happen. We didn’t “get lucky”. We had to work on this for a long, long time. And it was really, really hard.
Small Moves
Peter got his tortilla for dinner tonight, along with a banana. I was making dinner, but John and Conner were still going to be out for awhile. He was hungry again later so I offered him some of our dinner we were eating late. He wailed and declined. I let him. Did he go to bed hungry? Possibly. Starving? Not at all. Would Portal have worked? I’ve no idea: we didn’t try it tonight. John was busy working on fixing our modem router problem ($140 later, problem solved. *sigh*) and didn’t have time. Who knows? It may not work the next time at all. We can only hope. Small moves, people.
