Most memories of my childhood have three dominant themes: the Christmas Pageant, Anne of Green Gables, and food.
My mother ran the Christmas pageant at our church for years (she revolutionized it by putting Herod in it - the perfect role for any misbehaving seven year-old boy in your midst, and let me tell you, I can guarantee you that Hunter isn’t shaping up to be the Baby Jesus but the Black Sheep and straight on to Herod - anyway Herod sneaked around the sanctuary stalking Jesus and Mary and Joseph, it was pretty hysterical) and my stepmother was as much a fan of Anne as I was the year I really, really, really wanted to die my hair red (apparently I did not learn much from Anne’s own escapade - mine wound up something close to eggplant, which I suppose is a little better than her green ‘do), so I came by those themes pretty honestly.
What I think took everyone by surprise was that I had some vague interest in food. As the kid who refused to eat breakfast, wouldn’t touch an apple that wasn’t green, and firmly believed there was something wrong with purple raisins and only golden raisins were worth eating, I can comfortably assure you that all the adults in my life thought I was on the road to a lifetime of chicken fingers.
Admittedly, I really do love chicken fingers. But I also really love Ethiopian food, bubble tea, and almost all apples, regardless of color. (But not golden delicious. Sorry, goldens. We disagree on ‘delicious.’) But somehow, one way or another, I became an eater.
A foodie.
And I want to know how.
My mother’s rules: This is dinner. This is what there is for dinner. Say thank you for dinner. And put a ma’am on the end of that sentence.
My stepmother’s rules: It’s this or yogurt.
My dad’s rules: I will make you sit at this table until you finish that glass of milk and if that means we stay here all night, that’s what it means. My dad did this with me and I will do this with you.
And he did. It was a very long night.
So today on
Design Mom, we talk about how to raise eaters. I’ve been reading Hungry Monkey (or laughing through it, that’s a better way to describe what I’ve been doing) and I want you to weigh in with your tips, tricks, and habits: how do you get your kids to eat more than chicken fingers?
I should point that to me, chicken fingers are still their own food group. But now, so are peri peri peppers. So I guess that’s a win.