Sarah recently wrote about her sneaky attempts to hide healthy fruit and vegetables in her children’s food. This way, I suppose your kids get the healthy stuff without all the whining and arguing.
I applaud Sarah, and any of you who do the hard work of pureeing, and dicing – all in an effort to ensure your child eats what they would ordinarily avoid. While I applaud you, I must also admit to not having the energy, or frankly the concern, to invest in such endeavors.
The recipe book Sarah recommended does a fine job explaining how it is not so much lying as it is creative cooking and thus assuages the guilt of any parent who is staunchly against lying to children.
My personal method does not work for any parent who feels such guilt. If you are inclined in such a way, I highly suggest you try Sarah’s book. If you have already absolved yourself of parental guilt and also don’t care to go through all the effort, feel free to try my trick.
Mackenzie watches as her plate is passed around the table and bits of food are placed in each space. Potatoes, fine; roast, good deal; dinner roll, fabulous; broccoli… Oh dear. There’s no data for this one.
“Mom.” she says with a humph, “I really don’t think I like this stuff.”
Take notes, or don’t, here’s my deceptive trick:
“What? Are you kidding me? You love this stuff. Don’t you remember?”
“Huh? I think I would know if I tried it before.”
“Oh, you probably just forgot, it was a long time ago. Anyways, you were all ‘ewww, I don’t like this’, and I was all, ‘just try it’, and so you did and then you were all, ‘hey, I really do like this stuff. And I was all, ’see? I told you.’ “
With a suspicious eye cocked my way, she takes a bite and chews.
“Hey, you’re right. I do like this stuff. I remember now.”
“Mom?”
“Yes Kenzie?”
“I never really liked this stuff before did I?”
“I’ll never tell.”
“Well, the good news is that I ate it all this time.”
Did you see what I did there? Pretty sneaky. And it required no extra steps in meal prep.
March 25th, 2008 at 8:28 am
I like that picture of the veggies.
Too bad I’m such a horrible liar, or I could do your method as well.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:25 am
It should probably shame me that I am as good at it as I am.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:35 am
If only that would work with Jacob. He just isn’t that trusting.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:45 am
I use that one all the time. But only because my oldest has become a super-sleuth (at 4) and picks through his pasta etc, sorting ‘good’ from ‘bad’ before eating. Which is of course when I roll out that old ‘you tried that before, and liked it’ line.
Sometimes, it even works…
March 25th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Well then you probably noticed, Potty, that I only posted about the day that the trick worked spot on. It doesn’t always work, cause it turns out that kids are smaaaart. Makes my head spin.
(I just jogged over to your blog and I must say that I found the whole story behind your name to be quite amusing.)
March 25th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Why, thank you Amy. I am constantly considering changing it as outside the UK no-one gets the joke and assumes (or at least, I think they assume) that mine is some fetish blog about unmentionable stuff. However, it’s too late to change, without losing track of all the people I’ve ‘met’ online. And also – what would I change it to? Potty (in the sense I mean), so perfectly sums up my life…
March 25th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
It did take me a minute to catch on. “Potty mouth” usually references someone who uses foul language.
So when I saw “Potty Mummy”, I naturally assumed your were a foul mouth Egyptian artifact.
I wouldn’t change it. Potty on.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Nice method!
You might also try, “No honey, these are for mommy and daddy, if there are any leftovers I MIGHT let you taste it.” It actually works over here.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Reverse psychology. Nice.
March 27th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
dang, I wish this worked with my fifteen year olds.