Like parents everywhere, Howard and I frequently provide “incentives” for our children to encourage behavior that we want. (We like the word “incentive” rather than the blunter “bribe” because it makes us feel less guilty for using the tactic.) The most common use of this tactic is at dinner time: “Kids who finish all of their dinner can have chocolate milk!” This is usually followed by the devouring of all food and demands for the promised treat, which we happily dole out, having gained our point. Sometimes however this tactic has uninintended results. Patches doesn’t much like hamburgers. There is something about the flavor or consistency of the meat that he simply doesn’t like. However her really really likes chocolate milk. So when Daddy told him he had to eat up all the hamburger in order to get chocolate milk, Patches put his brain to work and found a way to meet the requirments without actually ingesting any of the despised hamburger. He carefully bit, chewed, and spat back out every single bite of that hamburger. Howard and I only noticed this process when the hamburger was almostly completely rendered into a ground up pile on his plate. To Patches dismay we removed the mess and required him to eat a hot dog instead. We don’t give Patches hamburgers anymore.
4 thoughts on “Patches’ solution”
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Strangely, that reminds me of my own childhood, when I’m told I came up with any number of ingenious technicalities to get around doing what Mommy and Daddy actually wanted me to do.
Watch that one. He could be trouble. Possibly a future police officer or lawyer.
This has always been a sticking point for me. It’s hard, sometimes, to tell if a child genuinely dislikes a food or is just being picky. Now, there are very few foods that I hate (and even fewer that I would not eat if served as a guest somewhere) but there are a few! So by the same token, I don’t want to force my children to eat things that they truely hate. However, identifing those foods takes time and attention since my children will tell me they hate something one day and eat it cheerfully the next. And, of course, we don’t all have the same tastes so what is disliked by one is not by the other. My standard rule is “three bites”. Whatever it is, however much you hate it, you have to eat three bites of it. If after several attempts of the three bite rule they are still protesting that they hate it, it no longer appears on their plate at dinner. I don’t eat tomatoes or sweet potatoes (which the children love), Elizabeth is not required to eat spiniach or brussel sprouts (she’s at the age where that may be because none of her friends would eat them but none the less) and Emily is never required to have chinese when Elizabeth and I have that treat. It makes dinner time a little harder but I think it’s worth making an extra dish every so often.
Your rules sound lots like ours. 😉
In this case Patches has been served hamburgers repeatedly without eating them, so I’m pretty sure it is a genuine aversion.
After that performance, I’d say so, yes. 😀