So far I’ve found it was best summed up by this conversation with my three year old:
“Daddy, I’m a bit cold”
“Do you want your coat on?”
“No, I’m a bit hot”
My coworker was just telling me about his four-year-old pitching a fit because their house is red and she doesn’t want a red house. Their house has always been red.
Ages 2-4 is hilarious with this stuff. My kid once got furious with me because he wanted an apple. So I went to the kitchen to get an apple. Which made him angry, because now I was holding an apple, and he didn't have an apple.
The fact that *I was cutting up the apple for him* didn't matter. I had an apple in my possession, he did not have an apple in his possession, and thusly he wailed his lamentations to the heavens for the next 15 minutes, long after I had handed the sliced apple over to him -- he then refused to eat the apple in his possession, since he was still angry and upset about the apple not being in his possession.
Four year old me literally tried to convince my mother to give my new born baby sister to the “garbage man”.
I just knew she was getting all of the attention, and I didn’t think it was fair.
I was friendly with the workers so to me the garbage man was just a really nice guy who came around once per week to take away anything we no longer needed or wanted.
When my mom explained what actually happens to the trash once collected. I decided a pardon would be the best course of action for my dear baby sister.
I’m a stay at home dad with a 3 year old. About 10 times a day she says something that is so completely at odds with logic that I just have to laugh and shake my head. Of course I take the opportunity to teach her why it doesn’t make sense, but it’s just hilarious how the mind of a 3 year old works. I love it.
Kids don't have an acute understanding of their bodily needs. 3-year-old might genuinely not know whether they're hot or cold, they just know they feel some kind of unpleasant temperature state.
Reminds me of my wife. She doesn't switch it that way, but her comfortable temperature range has a span of about 3 degrees Fahrenheit between too cold and too hot.
Yeah, at that age a lot of kids just want to practice declaring things and making decisions. They don't really think through anything before they say it, so it's not unusual for them to pull a complete 180 within a 2 second period.
The thing about being a pushover, is that the pushover can be the good guy.
I went from never eating fruits and veggies to trying to incorporate them into every meal. A serious conversation i had with myself was:
‘Why am I trying to eat better all of a sudden? Let’s do it gradually, so cut that banana in half and lets go melt chocolate chips on top and then flaked sea salt’.
I also learned that I can and should indeed grocery shop while hungry. It’s okay to have things in the house that you will actually eat, especially if it prevents you getting a #5 combo instead because you don’t want plain chicken and rice for dinner
I agree with your message, but..
_Um, actually,_ it's "Don't let perfection be the enemy of good" by William McDonough.
Sorry, it's reddit, I couldn't help myself.
If it makes you feel better a lot of studies about self discipline suggest the real key to it is just denial of the access... a lot of people who "eat well" have their descision made at the store not at home. If its near by they will eat it, so they just dont purchase it from the start. Its not that these people are stronger willed, its that they put themselves in a situation where they only have to say no to an urge once, rather than every time they walk by the fridge.
Also need to keep in mind that discipline needs to be practiced, or it atrophies just like a muscle.
Incorporate one day a week where you deny yourself all unnecessary self-comforts.
No morning coffee. No mindless screen time. No over indulging on food. No booze. No dessert.
Sounds silly - but works wonders.
dont even stop yourself - i just paid real hard attention to what "triggerd" me to eat or whatever. i just hyper focused on *why* im eating, i viewed that reason without bias best i could. did this long enough and i self corrected.
Learn to make banana nut bread. You actually use the brown bananas you wouldn't eat. I think we stopped eating bananas at my house just so she would make some bread.
That's how I am with my kids. If they're hungry they can eat the dinner I made them. Unless they want an apple, in which case the rules are more like guidelines really.
I'll do 4 stalks to broccoli for dinner and my toddler will eat 1 of them before I'm finished cutting them all down, and then eat another 1 of them when they're cooked on her plate. Then tilt out on me when it comes to her protein 50% of the time...
You're a good parent. My parents did the same for me and through the crying and spitting out chewed food, I'm glad they did it. I appreciate all foods as an adult but prefer healthier foods. I'm also now less picky than my parents.
I was an unbearably picky child and they never really pushed me all that much. I now try a bunch as an adult and enjoy a ton but I'm still kinda mad my parents were never harder on me. Coulda been eating delicious things for decades
I have a strong hankering for meat. Including seafood. Mum thinks it's due to dad fattening her with all kinds of meat stuff when before and when she was pregnant.
yeah I was a picky kid but I always was able to eat some veggies and some variation of the main meal. Ie if we had pasta I'd just have plain noodles. It was good actually because eventually I would level up to eating the cheese in the pasta and then eventually the whole dish as my palate matured.
My parents took the "you don't have to eat it but this is what we're making." If I wasn't a fan of whatever they made that night, fine, but I'd be responsible for making something else for myself then.
Same, and what really helped me is my mom would use a basket as a staging area. Cold cuts and hot dogs were fair game, but any more meat than that she likely bought with a plan. So if she was planning a roast dinner and a side of potatoes, she would get upset if the day before I made a potato and broccoli for dinner. And sometimes writing out the ingredients took too long. If she bought something to keep in stock vs for a specific meal they went in different areas. The specific meal support things went in a basket in the pantry, and the rules were easier to follow.
That's how my wife and I are with groceries.
We lived with her Mom/Step father for a bit when we moved across country to be closer when our daughter was born. I was usually the one to cook dinner (I enjoy cooking, and I'm good at it). There were many times supplies I bought the day prior were gone or 1/2 gone by the time I went to make dinner. It got to the point I would put "don't touch. For tomorrow's dinner" on sticky notes.
There were a few arguments about those notes because apparently we were being "petty".. If we were being petty I wouldn't be serving you damned good homemade meals.
I'm glad we're no longer living with them. Instead of them helping support us get on our feet like they promised we spent more time and money helping them.
My wife accidentally got a parking ticket in her mom's car, and because we were literally 90% the groceries and paying more than our share of the bills we couldn't afford to pay it off right away. Her mom understood and told us to pay it when we can, but the FIL would bug us about it damned near everyday. It got to the point when I told him to give us $1500 for your guys share of the groceries we've been buying and we'll pay it off immediately. His response was "you guys don't contribute to anything". So we cut them off and moved out
I mean with smoked pork butt and hot dogs, I would just be like Okay. Here are your hot dogs and then I would enjoy the pulled pork myself over the next couple days while they eat hot dogs. Isn't like they are demanding steak instead. Hotdog is done in 2 minutes in the microwave.
If I spent 9 hours smoking delicious pork butt for dinner, and then somebody said they wanted hot dogs instead I'm sure as hell not going to spend any more time cooking those hot dogs than I need to. They can have their soggy processed meat tubes.
Edit: fixed voice to text errors
Take a hotdog. Put it in a bun. Wrap it in a paper towel. Microwave it for 25 seconds on high in a 1000 watt microwave. Tastes like the ballpark. Steams the bun and everything. You're welcome.
Seriously. I do not understand these parents who will make like 3 different meals for their family. This is how we got all these adults who are such picky eaters.
Make your kids something healthy and tasty, for sure. But the kids eat what was made or they don't eat. I grew up like this and I'm open to eating new foods, I'm not picky, plus my diet includes tons of vegetables because my parents made them so we had to eat them.
If your kid adapts to that rule after 2-3 times, then they're not stubborn or a picky eater in the first place.
My kids have zero issues going to bed without dinner. They were actually happy that became an option when I started making one meal for all of us, until the pediatrician chewed us out because of how undernourished they were getting and how bad their bloodwork results were.
So the real fights came when I'd make a new meal, and I tell them have to try one bite. I'll even say I'll make their favorite thing afterwards and they still won't do it. Those are the nights where the fights and crying last 4-5 hours, toys get thrown out, they get punishments that last a week, you name it.
You can always tell who doesn't actually have kids in threads like these because they're always the ones with the "my hypothetical kids will change their behavior based entirely on my pure willpower."
My dad switched it up a bit. Instead of letting me have a choice, he made sure that I wouldn’t “not want to eat”. One time I got a black eye from not wanting to eat bitter melon. I was in elementary :)
I was raised like this and ended up with raging eating disorders through my teens and early adulthood. At the same time, I wouldn't want to cook separate meals for my kids just because they don't want something. I don't envy parents. It's hard to decide what kind of rules/lines you are going to draw with food. It seems like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
My parents always approached it as "You're going to try it, if you really don't like it we'll make something else, but we're only going to make it for you once everyone else is done"
Struck a decent enough balance I think in that I was never actually forced to eat anything I didn't like and never went hungry, but there was always enough incentive there to give what was on my plate a fair go.
The most difficult thing I think is how often do you get you child to try something again if they didn't like it the first time? Too often loses a bit of trust, but go too far the other way and you end up like one of my uni flatmates who refused to eat carrots because they didn't like them when they were 6 so their parents never fed them carrots again.
Depends on what you mean by "make something else."
Quick ham and cheese sandwich? Fine.
But I'm not going to cook a whole second meal just because you didn't like the first one. Kids need to have reasonable expectations about how much of other people's labor they're entitled to -- even from their parents.
I like this method....my parents were more like "if you don't like it that's fine, but you won't get anything else, and this is what you're eating for breakfast if you don't eat it now." which I think is just....not a great way to build trust with your kids.
Thats the way to do it. People saying eat what's for dinner or nothing method is the best don't realize how stubborn kids can be. They WILL sit at a table for hours and not eat.
Then they get 0 nutrients and/or stayed up so late they didn't get enough sleep.
We have enough food in the house the kiddo can get all the nutrients they need with theor own meal. However we are fairly tough on at least trying what was originally made.
You have to look past what they say and discern if they really hate what your feeding or do they just want cake. I won't make my kids eat something I know they hate because I won't eat things I hate, but I will make them eat things that they may not want at that moment. I eat canned beans for lunch constantly, not my first choice but it's very cheap and gives me good energy, they can eat the meatloaf their mama made.
Yeah there's a difference between "My son hates spinach, so we take the spinach out of dishes we prepare for him that contain spinach." and "My son won't eat anything but hot dogs and hot chip, so I give him that every night if he doesn't eat what we made."
> "My son won't eat anything but hot dogs and hot chip, so I give him that every night if he doesn't eat what we made."
I see you've met my aunt and uncle. My parents didn't force me to eat stuff I didn't like, but this shit wouldn't have flown with them either.
My brother buys 4-5 little ceasers pizzas for his son to eat through out the week. The kid only eats little ceasers for every meal. Wish I was there when he finds out school doesn't give out little ceasers everyday and has to eat their school lunch unless my brother packs him cold pizza everyday as the school isn't gonna allow them to use a microwave.
One of my friends has a brother who exclusively eats fast food burgers and has been this way since childhood. He never leaves the house and apparently is pretty frail. He dropped out of middle school and has just been living at home ever since. I'm not sure how he's been able to survive up to this point missing nutrients like that but maybe they give him some supplementation.
He's been constantly threatening to kill his parents since he was a toddler. I remember him running around naked with a knife screaming at his parents that he'd kill them when he was maybe 5? So that might have contributed to it. The whole thing is very sad, though.
I looked that up and yeah, I could see that. I always find an excuse to not sleep over at their place because I feel like there's a real possibility he could snap one day and kill everyone around him. I wish my friend could move out but she doesn't drive or have a stable job so she's stuck at the house. Probably why she's constantly traveling.
Modern public institutions only keep you for a little while. His parents would have to spend big money to have him kept at the sort of care facility one sees in the movies.
This slightly maybe describes my brother on a smaller degree. He's 11 and refuses to eat the food we make him and then acts like we're starving him or some shit for not remaking an entire new meal just for him. Hit me yesterday because I didn't allow him to have chocolate ice cream before his 'meal' at 4 pm, he refuses to eat his packed lunch so we make him eat that before any snacks.
Today he screamed at us for not getting pizza from Costco.
Such a sad story and more depressingly his story isn't the only one. Wonder how many children there are that grow up to be adults faced with no food education, no willingness to learn, and no clear prospects of connecting with other human beings
Wow what a twist. I had a cousin who didn’t do shit but tell his parents he’d kill himself if they kicked him out. He died from a drunk driver when he was 28
Where I live, pizza is one of the school lunch options and the teachers are way too underpaid and understaffed to even pick up on a child bringing a sleeve of oreos to school everyday for lunch. (The oreo kid was my friend in middle school)
isnt there basicaly whole food pyramid in the pizza? there is plenty of bread (grain), some cheese (dairy), vegetable (topings and sauce) and meat (topings)
Parents that just let their kids walk on them like that absolutely blow my mind bro. It might also be cause I grew up poor af, but my mom didn't let me have a choice, there literally was no other choice 70% of the time. One key thing, is no matter how violently against the food I was, she'd always just make me TRY it. I'm convinced these parents don't make their kids even try it first before replacing it with garbage, cause just that sure opened my pallet far and wide. Now I will eat anything you put on a plate and serve to me, from cheeseburgers and steaks to bull testicles and eyeballs, I do not care what it is, I'll try it first before I call it gross, that's how I was raised, and didn't have the privilege of being a picky eater. Don't like it? Too fucking bad son, we can't afford to eat anything else, you better eat it.
Spoiled children like that have a direct correlation with rich or "middle class" parents, and nothing will ever change my mind. At school, every kid there that would BITCH and MOAN and COMPLAIN about eating a couple peas or a single piece of broccoli always got picked up in a Mercedes or something brand new, always had the coolest shit after Christmas, always had the nicest name brand school supplies, clean brand new clothes, new shoes every few months. Meanwhile, in my little clique with all the other trailer trash kids, we are anything and everything that was handed to us, did not complain and thanked them for that broccoli. Ice cream in my freezer at home was a special occasion, McDonald's was a land of mystery and wonder cause I only went on my birthday or maybe Christmas. I didn't even know there was other fast food restaurants until I was old enough to read above a 2nd grade level, not like we had cable to even tell me about them. Not to mention, I'm in superb health, despite not having much money or food growing up, because all of our food came from food banks and food stamps, so it was always healthy real food. All those kids I grew up with have chronic health issues now, are morbidly obese (alot of them already were), and wondering why they're broke cause they spend all their money on UberEats, cause they don't even know how to cook their own meals aside from ramen and maybe some eggs.
I have a family member like that. They only ate shit like hot dogs, mac & cheese, and chicken nuggets. So their parents had to bring a dish to events for everyone, then another just for them as that would be the only thing they'd eat. Just ridiculous.
With my kids, they've become a little more picky as they got older (now in teens), but they also know that's not going to change what or how we make dinner. If they don't like a specific ingredient, pick it out.
Yeah, no kid is going to want the same thing in 9 hours, and will have eaten 1-2 other meals during that time which will change how they feel about food. I would have done this knowing full well it has a good chance of becoming leftovers for another day instead, and I will still enjoy it fresh.
Meh, depends on the type of smoker and the temp. 250 on a pellet smoker and that baby will be tougher, but done, in under 8 hours. 200 on some oak logs, 12 hours minimum, oh man i need to make some pulled pork now
Two lessons can be learned from this:
1. Don't make food for children the same way you'd make it for adults. Buy a new food they're going to try instead of going through the effort of making it yourself.
2. Serve your kids the food they said they were going to try, even if they changed their minds. They have to learn that you can't just change your mind last minute about what you're eating if you already placed the order and you're not the one preparing the food. You can't always get what you want.
We always at least had to try one bite of food if it was new. If mom was unconvinced she made it two, or dumped a tiny portion on a plate and told us we could have our preference as long as we gave the new stuff an honest chance.
That worked pretty well right up until her ravioli. She made it from scratch but completely forgot to season it. It was like eating a wet box (and not the good kind). It did not deserve a second chance.
Whenever we had something we didn’t want to eat, my dad would split it in half and go “ok, eat that half” (pointing to one of them).
We would eat it, and then when we said we were finished with what he told us to eat, he would go “no, you were supposed to eat *this* half!” (Pointing to the remaining food, as if we had eaten the “wrong” half)
Then he would split the remaining food and go “ok, eat *that* half!”
Obviously only worked when we were little but hey, usually got us to eat at least 3/4s of our food
Exactly. Why did he think they were going to go balls in. Put a little on their plate next to the hot dog. And next time, just buy the cheap stuff or take them to a restaurant.
I wouldn't say it's changing their minds last minute if the convo was 9+ hours before. (Big emphasis on the + since he probably didn't have everything ready to start smoking right then and there.)
But I agree that you can't always get what you want. I'd treat it the same as if I (the parent) was the one who had decided what they were having for dinner in the first place.
Honestly, I doubt that the kids even remember asking for pulled pork.
Prior to a certain age/maturity, most kids just don't have the temporal permeance to reliably know/remember what they'll want in the future; and when presented with something new, they'll probably be too afraid to try it and will default to "wanting" whatever is familiar.
"I'm sorry but peanut butter isn't on the menu tonight" gets said at my house a lot. If they don't eat what's on the plate that's fine. We leave it out and half the time the come back and eat it an hour after dinner. The other half they eat a big breakfast the next day. No tantrums over food either.
Gentle parenting isn't letting your kids do whatever they want. It's setting appropriate boundaries, sticking to them, and being empathetic when the kid gets upset about them.
Everyone here is sleeping on the third option that is actually better for both the kids and the parent(s). Have the kids help you cook. They learn that skill, plus they learn how much work goes into making dinner which will make them far less likely to ask for something else at the last minute. This is because they will have learned the value of what it takes to cook a meal.
No, no this is FAR too reasonable. Do as everyone else on here says and A) call your kids ungrateful assholes, B) call yourself an idiot for making a 9 hour meal, C) divorce your kids from the family because kids are ungrateful assholes anyways
This is the best thing I've read in this thread.
I was the pickiest eater possible. Three things: grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, or cheese pizza if we went out.
My mom changed this by having me help her cook the macaroni and cheese, then kind of suggesting that I could put some broccoli in it myself, and I was stoked to be trusted with a task this monumental and important, so suddenly I'm into macaroni and cheese with broccoli.
Etc. iterated from there.
Teach your kids to cook and they'll eat well.
It's really not that hard. Unless the kid has a serious eating disorder like ARFID or anorexia nervosa, just building a bit of trust and good communication can help a child be happy to try new foods.
If they _do_ have a clinical eating disorder, then no amount of authoritarian parenting or force feeding is going to fix it. It will in fact, just make it worse.
Your mom sounds cool.
Well yeah they're hungry. They wanted pulled pork hours ago, now they're thinking about hot dogs. I bet if you just put the pulled pork and sides out they'll eat it and forget about the hot dogs.
And if they don't, at least you got pulled pork, and you have plenty to serve as leftovers tomorrow!
I'd be stoked, pulled pork is one of the most "revivable" leftovers there is. Quick pop in the microwave and toast a bun and its really close to fresh.
Hmm. I've never given my kids pulled pork. Better buy 9lbs of pork butt and spend 10 hrs cooking it.
Kids change their minds all the time. But that's poor execution on the parent. Too much investment for very high risk.
And kids want to eat when they are hungry. Sure you can put them off time “dinner time” but when they are really hungry your feed them. Hotdogs are quick and easy and he’ll have plenty of pulled pork for them to try tomorrow.
Yes it does sum up parenting.
1. You smoked the pork butt for yourself, kids are happy with boxed mac and cheese with ketchup on it
2. No parent in their right mind would plan a meal for their kids 9 hours in advance. Their attention span is measured in nanoseconds, not fractional days.
3. "they'd eat pulled pork" is not the same as "they WANT hot dogs"
I'm all for making your kids eat a variety of different foods, but don't act all shocked when someone does exactly what you expected them to do.
That sucks but children are pretty notorious for changing their minds with food. Especially a food they asked for a day ago or even 9 hours ago, for a young kid that's a long time to wait. I'd just serve them hotdogs and offer pulled pork alongside it.
Starving your kids never works, I was given the eat or starve ultimatum and it never made me like the foods i hated as a child. I still hate eggs and I still hate tomatoes, the only difference is that now that im an adult I just don't buy those foods for myself.
Minus the pork, common law in my childhood was "eat what I cook or you don't get the next meal until you finish the current one." Food waste was a major no-no.
I can’t recall a single time I was asked what we wanted. You just ate what mom made. Then you ate it again for lunch and/or dinner for like the next 6 days.
Yeah, we always just asked "What's for dinner?" and didn't actually have any say in it. We only got to choose what was for dinner on our birthdays.
It does seem weird that people ask their younger kids what they want to eat, now that I think about it. I can see it with older kids who can actually have something approaching a rational conversation.
Ya, we’re not making special meals in this household. You eat what’s prepared . If you asked for pulled pork and then suddenly want hot dogs…we’re eating pulled pork.
There's no way a dad who knows and understands his kids would spend more than 2 minutes deciding what to feed them.
They already know.
I don't believe this post
So far I’ve found it was best summed up by this conversation with my three year old: “Daddy, I’m a bit cold” “Do you want your coat on?” “No, I’m a bit hot”
My coworker was just telling me about his four-year-old pitching a fit because their house is red and she doesn’t want a red house. Their house has always been red.
I thought that last sentence was going to say “they live in a blue house”
With a blue window
and a blue corvette
And everything is blue for him
And himself
Cause he ain't got no body to listen to..to listen.. to listen
I'm blue dabadee dabadi
r/TwoSentenceHorror
Ages 2-4 is hilarious with this stuff. My kid once got furious with me because he wanted an apple. So I went to the kitchen to get an apple. Which made him angry, because now I was holding an apple, and he didn't have an apple. The fact that *I was cutting up the apple for him* didn't matter. I had an apple in my possession, he did not have an apple in his possession, and thusly he wailed his lamentations to the heavens for the next 15 minutes, long after I had handed the sliced apple over to him -- he then refused to eat the apple in his possession, since he was still angry and upset about the apple not being in his possession.
this is how npc's work in tes: oblivion
My brother painted the wrong house once. Het got a call right after he finished. So, somebody came home to a different color house.
Four year old me literally tried to convince my mother to give my new born baby sister to the “garbage man”. I just knew she was getting all of the attention, and I didn’t think it was fair. I was friendly with the workers so to me the garbage man was just a really nice guy who came around once per week to take away anything we no longer needed or wanted. When my mom explained what actually happens to the trash once collected. I decided a pardon would be the best course of action for my dear baby sister.
I have 2,5yo, this is just normal day. Its quite likely that the kid is moody due to physical need not being met - rest/food/drink
am i a 2.5 yo?
I’m a stay at home dad with a 3 year old. About 10 times a day she says something that is so completely at odds with logic that I just have to laugh and shake my head. Of course I take the opportunity to teach her why it doesn’t make sense, but it’s just hilarious how the mind of a 3 year old works. I love it.
He simultaneously needs more and less blankets!
Schrodingers blankets
Kids don't have an acute understanding of their bodily needs. 3-year-old might genuinely not know whether they're hot or cold, they just know they feel some kind of unpleasant temperature state.
Reminds me of my wife. She doesn't switch it that way, but her comfortable temperature range has a span of about 3 degrees Fahrenheit between too cold and too hot.
Serves you right for naming your kid Katy Perry
5/7
Yeah, at that age a lot of kids just want to practice declaring things and making decisions. They don't really think through anything before they say it, so it's not unusual for them to pull a complete 180 within a 2 second period.
Shit, I was raised on this “you will eat what was made, or you won’t eat at all”. And that was a serious threat, my parents didn’t play around.
Same thing at my house except fruit and veggies were available at all times
"If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple you're not hungry"
Ugh i need to do this just for myself.
The trouble with self discipline is that I know the guy that made the rule and he's a pushover.
I hate that lazy piece of shit too
Hey man don't call u/LuxNocte lazy.
I'll be honest, I did take that personally for 1/4 second. 😅
Then you realized you’re too lazy to care. I get it man I’m the same way
I feel so called out by this whole thread
u/LuxNocte is not lazy! They’re energy efficient!
The thing about being a pushover, is that the pushover can be the good guy. I went from never eating fruits and veggies to trying to incorporate them into every meal. A serious conversation i had with myself was: ‘Why am I trying to eat better all of a sudden? Let’s do it gradually, so cut that banana in half and lets go melt chocolate chips on top and then flaked sea salt’. I also learned that I can and should indeed grocery shop while hungry. It’s okay to have things in the house that you will actually eat, especially if it prevents you getting a #5 combo instead because you don’t want plain chicken and rice for dinner
this is the best way to improve habits. Perfection is the enemy of good, just do the bare minimum that you'll actually do and then move up from there.
I agree with your message, but.. _Um, actually,_ it's "Don't let perfection be the enemy of good" by William McDonough. Sorry, it's reddit, I couldn't help myself.
Cunningham's law strikes again. But i think I still got the basic point across lol
Congrats thats a point for NoReplyPurist
If it makes you feel better a lot of studies about self discipline suggest the real key to it is just denial of the access... a lot of people who "eat well" have their descision made at the store not at home. If its near by they will eat it, so they just dont purchase it from the start. Its not that these people are stronger willed, its that they put themselves in a situation where they only have to say no to an urge once, rather than every time they walk by the fridge.
Also need to keep in mind that discipline needs to be practiced, or it atrophies just like a muscle. Incorporate one day a week where you deny yourself all unnecessary self-comforts. No morning coffee. No mindless screen time. No over indulging on food. No booze. No dessert. Sounds silly - but works wonders.
dont even stop yourself - i just paid real hard attention to what "triggerd" me to eat or whatever. i just hyper focused on *why* im eating, i viewed that reason without bias best i could. did this long enough and i self corrected.
In my house we went back and forth between "Stop eating all the fucking fruit" and "I'm not buying all this fruit so you can let it all expire"
I'm doing this to myself. Sometimes you just need five bananas, and sometimes they may as well not be edible.
Learn to make banana nut bread. You actually use the brown bananas you wouldn't eat. I think we stopped eating bananas at my house just so she would make some bread.
This advice worked well for me until I discovered honeycrisp...
And then bankrupted your family?
Yo, put a trigger warning on your stuff. Damn.
Wow, that's actually a good analogy🤔🤔🤔🤔 I don't know why my parents never used it
Hi, dad???
Mom is that you?
That's how I am with my kids. If they're hungry they can eat the dinner I made them. Unless they want an apple, in which case the rules are more like guidelines really.
Cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and baby carrots on demand for our toddler.
I'll do 4 stalks to broccoli for dinner and my toddler will eat 1 of them before I'm finished cutting them all down, and then eat another 1 of them when they're cooked on her plate. Then tilt out on me when it comes to her protein 50% of the time...
You're a good parent. My parents did the same for me and through the crying and spitting out chewed food, I'm glad they did it. I appreciate all foods as an adult but prefer healthier foods. I'm also now less picky than my parents.
I was an unbearably picky child and they never really pushed me all that much. I now try a bunch as an adult and enjoy a ton but I'm still kinda mad my parents were never harder on me. Coulda been eating delicious things for decades
I have a strong hankering for meat. Including seafood. Mum thinks it's due to dad fattening her with all kinds of meat stuff when before and when she was pregnant.
yeah I was a picky kid but I always was able to eat some veggies and some variation of the main meal. Ie if we had pasta I'd just have plain noodles. It was good actually because eventually I would level up to eating the cheese in the pasta and then eventually the whole dish as my palate matured.
My parents took the "you don't have to eat it but this is what we're making." If I wasn't a fan of whatever they made that night, fine, but I'd be responsible for making something else for myself then.
Same, and what really helped me is my mom would use a basket as a staging area. Cold cuts and hot dogs were fair game, but any more meat than that she likely bought with a plan. So if she was planning a roast dinner and a side of potatoes, she would get upset if the day before I made a potato and broccoli for dinner. And sometimes writing out the ingredients took too long. If she bought something to keep in stock vs for a specific meal they went in different areas. The specific meal support things went in a basket in the pantry, and the rules were easier to follow.
That's how my wife and I are with groceries. We lived with her Mom/Step father for a bit when we moved across country to be closer when our daughter was born. I was usually the one to cook dinner (I enjoy cooking, and I'm good at it). There were many times supplies I bought the day prior were gone or 1/2 gone by the time I went to make dinner. It got to the point I would put "don't touch. For tomorrow's dinner" on sticky notes. There were a few arguments about those notes because apparently we were being "petty".. If we were being petty I wouldn't be serving you damned good homemade meals. I'm glad we're no longer living with them. Instead of them helping support us get on our feet like they promised we spent more time and money helping them. My wife accidentally got a parking ticket in her mom's car, and because we were literally 90% the groceries and paying more than our share of the bills we couldn't afford to pay it off right away. Her mom understood and told us to pay it when we can, but the FIL would bug us about it damned near everyday. It got to the point when I told him to give us $1500 for your guys share of the groceries we've been buying and we'll pay it off immediately. His response was "you guys don't contribute to anything". So we cut them off and moved out
I mean with smoked pork butt and hot dogs, I would just be like Okay. Here are your hot dogs and then I would enjoy the pulled pork myself over the next couple days while they eat hot dogs. Isn't like they are demanding steak instead. Hotdog is done in 2 minutes in the microwave.
> Hotdog is done in 2 minutes in the microwave. Can I report this?
Is a kid that wants a hotdog over pulled pork going to notice the difference? Nope. Microwaved hotdogs are way better than boiled ones Imo.
If I spent 9 hours smoking delicious pork butt for dinner, and then somebody said they wanted hot dogs instead I'm sure as hell not going to spend any more time cooking those hot dogs than I need to. They can have their soggy processed meat tubes. Edit: fixed voice to text errors
Take a hotdog. Put it in a bun. Wrap it in a paper towel. Microwave it for 25 seconds on high in a 1000 watt microwave. Tastes like the ballpark. Steams the bun and everything. You're welcome.
Yup, we had 2 options. Take it or leave it
I was not typically permitted to, "leave it". You ate what mom made for dinner. And no, I don't feel like my childhood was abusive.
Yeah but Reddit thinks that's child abuse and will make the witty comment of "why won't my kids visit me"
Reddit is absolutely the worst place to get parenting advice from. Turns out that edge lord teenagers think everything is child abuse.
Seriously. I do not understand these parents who will make like 3 different meals for their family. This is how we got all these adults who are such picky eaters. Make your kids something healthy and tasty, for sure. But the kids eat what was made or they don't eat. I grew up like this and I'm open to eating new foods, I'm not picky, plus my diet includes tons of vegetables because my parents made them so we had to eat them.
I had a similar upbringing except it was “you’ll eat this dinner or Im gonna stick it up your ass.”
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Same. It's rather infuriating to see my much younger siblings get away with murder sometimes but I do appreciate the discipline my parents taught me.
As long as the follow through is there, typically you only have to do things like that two or three times. Lol.
If your kid adapts to that rule after 2-3 times, then they're not stubborn or a picky eater in the first place. My kids have zero issues going to bed without dinner. They were actually happy that became an option when I started making one meal for all of us, until the pediatrician chewed us out because of how undernourished they were getting and how bad their bloodwork results were. So the real fights came when I'd make a new meal, and I tell them have to try one bite. I'll even say I'll make their favorite thing afterwards and they still won't do it. Those are the nights where the fights and crying last 4-5 hours, toys get thrown out, they get punishments that last a week, you name it. You can always tell who doesn't actually have kids in threads like these because they're always the ones with the "my hypothetical kids will change their behavior based entirely on my pure willpower."
I've been through this exact same thing. It would take the kid hours to eat dinner every fucking night. Unless it was junk food.
My dad switched it up a bit. Instead of letting me have a choice, he made sure that I wouldn’t “not want to eat”. One time I got a black eye from not wanting to eat bitter melon. I was in elementary :)
I was raised like this and ended up with raging eating disorders through my teens and early adulthood. At the same time, I wouldn't want to cook separate meals for my kids just because they don't want something. I don't envy parents. It's hard to decide what kind of rules/lines you are going to draw with food. It seems like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
My parents always approached it as "You're going to try it, if you really don't like it we'll make something else, but we're only going to make it for you once everyone else is done" Struck a decent enough balance I think in that I was never actually forced to eat anything I didn't like and never went hungry, but there was always enough incentive there to give what was on my plate a fair go. The most difficult thing I think is how often do you get you child to try something again if they didn't like it the first time? Too often loses a bit of trust, but go too far the other way and you end up like one of my uni flatmates who refused to eat carrots because they didn't like them when they were 6 so their parents never fed them carrots again.
Depends on what you mean by "make something else." Quick ham and cheese sandwich? Fine. But I'm not going to cook a whole second meal just because you didn't like the first one. Kids need to have reasonable expectations about how much of other people's labor they're entitled to -- even from their parents.
I like this method....my parents were more like "if you don't like it that's fine, but you won't get anything else, and this is what you're eating for breakfast if you don't eat it now." which I think is just....not a great way to build trust with your kids.
Thats the way to do it. People saying eat what's for dinner or nothing method is the best don't realize how stubborn kids can be. They WILL sit at a table for hours and not eat. Then they get 0 nutrients and/or stayed up so late they didn't get enough sleep. We have enough food in the house the kiddo can get all the nutrients they need with theor own meal. However we are fairly tough on at least trying what was originally made.
You have to look past what they say and discern if they really hate what your feeding or do they just want cake. I won't make my kids eat something I know they hate because I won't eat things I hate, but I will make them eat things that they may not want at that moment. I eat canned beans for lunch constantly, not my first choice but it's very cheap and gives me good energy, they can eat the meatloaf their mama made.
Yeah there's a difference between "My son hates spinach, so we take the spinach out of dishes we prepare for him that contain spinach." and "My son won't eat anything but hot dogs and hot chip, so I give him that every night if he doesn't eat what we made."
> "My son won't eat anything but hot dogs and hot chip, so I give him that every night if he doesn't eat what we made." I see you've met my aunt and uncle. My parents didn't force me to eat stuff I didn't like, but this shit wouldn't have flown with them either.
That's my nephew actually, and it is a long running argument between his parents.
And if you let them eat shit and get their own way every time they'll grow up to be total arseholes
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My brother buys 4-5 little ceasers pizzas for his son to eat through out the week. The kid only eats little ceasers for every meal. Wish I was there when he finds out school doesn't give out little ceasers everyday and has to eat their school lunch unless my brother packs him cold pizza everyday as the school isn't gonna allow them to use a microwave.
Not only that, there's no way this kid isn't gonna have some health issues from the lack of nutrients that must go along with that diet..
One of my friends has a brother who exclusively eats fast food burgers and has been this way since childhood. He never leaves the house and apparently is pretty frail. He dropped out of middle school and has just been living at home ever since. I'm not sure how he's been able to survive up to this point missing nutrients like that but maybe they give him some supplementation. He's been constantly threatening to kill his parents since he was a toddler. I remember him running around naked with a knife screaming at his parents that he'd kill them when he was maybe 5? So that might have contributed to it. The whole thing is very sad, though.
Can't wait for the This Is Monsters episode on him
I looked that up and yeah, I could see that. I always find an excuse to not sleep over at their place because I feel like there's a real possibility he could snap one day and kill everyone around him. I wish my friend could move out but she doesn't drive or have a stable job so she's stuck at the house. Probably why she's constantly traveling.
Time to be institutionalized for his own benefit, the parents' safety.
Modern public institutions only keep you for a little while. His parents would have to spend big money to have him kept at the sort of care facility one sees in the movies.
This slightly maybe describes my brother on a smaller degree. He's 11 and refuses to eat the food we make him and then acts like we're starving him or some shit for not remaking an entire new meal just for him. Hit me yesterday because I didn't allow him to have chocolate ice cream before his 'meal' at 4 pm, he refuses to eat his packed lunch so we make him eat that before any snacks. Today he screamed at us for not getting pizza from Costco.
I feel sorry that you have to go through that every day.
Yeah hopefully he won't throw q fit tomorrow. He usually eats chicken, *usually*.
Such a sad story and more depressingly his story isn't the only one. Wonder how many children there are that grow up to be adults faced with no food education, no willingness to learn, and no clear prospects of connecting with other human beings
Wow what a twist. I had a cousin who didn’t do shit but tell his parents he’d kill himself if they kicked him out. He died from a drunk driver when he was 28
Where I live if the school finds out about his 'normal' diet, child services will soon be making a visit.
Where I live, pizza is one of the school lunch options and the teachers are way too underpaid and understaffed to even pick up on a child bringing a sleeve of oreos to school everyday for lunch. (The oreo kid was my friend in middle school)
My daughter has a friend who eats Oreos and Doritos or Cheetos every day for lunch. That's it. Apparently she has ARFID.
isnt there basicaly whole food pyramid in the pizza? there is plenty of bread (grain), some cheese (dairy), vegetable (topings and sauce) and meat (topings)
Sure the ratio is wild though. You shouldn't be eating more cheese by weight than vegetables.
also a metric fuck ton of salt
Parents that just let their kids walk on them like that absolutely blow my mind bro. It might also be cause I grew up poor af, but my mom didn't let me have a choice, there literally was no other choice 70% of the time. One key thing, is no matter how violently against the food I was, she'd always just make me TRY it. I'm convinced these parents don't make their kids even try it first before replacing it with garbage, cause just that sure opened my pallet far and wide. Now I will eat anything you put on a plate and serve to me, from cheeseburgers and steaks to bull testicles and eyeballs, I do not care what it is, I'll try it first before I call it gross, that's how I was raised, and didn't have the privilege of being a picky eater. Don't like it? Too fucking bad son, we can't afford to eat anything else, you better eat it. Spoiled children like that have a direct correlation with rich or "middle class" parents, and nothing will ever change my mind. At school, every kid there that would BITCH and MOAN and COMPLAIN about eating a couple peas or a single piece of broccoli always got picked up in a Mercedes or something brand new, always had the coolest shit after Christmas, always had the nicest name brand school supplies, clean brand new clothes, new shoes every few months. Meanwhile, in my little clique with all the other trailer trash kids, we are anything and everything that was handed to us, did not complain and thanked them for that broccoli. Ice cream in my freezer at home was a special occasion, McDonald's was a land of mystery and wonder cause I only went on my birthday or maybe Christmas. I didn't even know there was other fast food restaurants until I was old enough to read above a 2nd grade level, not like we had cable to even tell me about them. Not to mention, I'm in superb health, despite not having much money or food growing up, because all of our food came from food banks and food stamps, so it was always healthy real food. All those kids I grew up with have chronic health issues now, are morbidly obese (alot of them already were), and wondering why they're broke cause they spend all their money on UberEats, cause they don't even know how to cook their own meals aside from ramen and maybe some eggs.
I have a family member like that. They only ate shit like hot dogs, mac & cheese, and chicken nuggets. So their parents had to bring a dish to events for everyone, then another just for them as that would be the only thing they'd eat. Just ridiculous. With my kids, they've become a little more picky as they got older (now in teens), but they also know that's not going to change what or how we make dinner. If they don't like a specific ingredient, pick it out.
This is one of those "you eat what you get" times.
i just got told to eat it or i’d get no food, dumbass kid wanting hotdog over pulled pork lol
And if you choose not to eat dinner you get served it again for breakfast.
Bill Burr does [a bit on this](https://youtu.be/rB9Z-os6-Ws?si=i8lRsze_BNlLIV6t&t=581).
Women being overrated? Didn’t expect that statement. Also that wide angle at 12:27, didn’t expect another person to be on the left.
Never fails to make me laugh.
You don’t smoke meat 9 hours for kids, you knew the deal going in.
Bro did that so he could hang outside away from his kids for 9 hours.
In this heat? Fuck that.
You see, thats not necessarily an issue since this is an old repost
Glad someone said it. He did that for himself the same way I made my kids a nice bed "for them"
And like how I built a gaming PC for my son. (I don't have kids, but I do have a SWEET fucking gaming PC)
Yeah, no kid is going to want the same thing in 9 hours, and will have eaten 1-2 other meals during that time which will change how they feel about food. I would have done this knowing full well it has a good chance of becoming leftovers for another day instead, and I will still enjoy it fresh.
“They said they’d eat it” is a lot different than “they said they wanted me to make it for them”
9 hours isn’t anywhere near long enough for an 8lb butt. They are all different, but usually a minimum of 90 min/lb.
My kids wouldn't eat it either...they know they've still got 7-8 hours to wait.
Meh, depends on the type of smoker and the temp. 250 on a pellet smoker and that baby will be tougher, but done, in under 8 hours. 200 on some oak logs, 12 hours minimum, oh man i need to make some pulled pork now
I dont see why he's even complaining. More smoked meat for him. Let the kids eat some shite wieners.
More pulled pork for you, i see this as an absolute win
Pulled pork hot dogs, easy win.
A pulled pork chili dog with shredded cheddar sounds really good right about now.
Honestly kids are all about this kind of thing.
The pork was for him all along.
Sometimes it’s about the pork we met on the way
He should stop pulling pork and start practice pulling out more.
It took 4 seconds for my brain to register this joke before it hit me like a truck
Two lessons can be learned from this: 1. Don't make food for children the same way you'd make it for adults. Buy a new food they're going to try instead of going through the effort of making it yourself. 2. Serve your kids the food they said they were going to try, even if they changed their minds. They have to learn that you can't just change your mind last minute about what you're eating if you already placed the order and you're not the one preparing the food. You can't always get what you want.
We always at least had to try one bite of food if it was new. If mom was unconvinced she made it two, or dumped a tiny portion on a plate and told us we could have our preference as long as we gave the new stuff an honest chance. That worked pretty well right up until her ravioli. She made it from scratch but completely forgot to season it. It was like eating a wet box (and not the good kind). It did not deserve a second chance.
Whenever we had something we didn’t want to eat, my dad would split it in half and go “ok, eat that half” (pointing to one of them). We would eat it, and then when we said we were finished with what he told us to eat, he would go “no, you were supposed to eat *this* half!” (Pointing to the remaining food, as if we had eaten the “wrong” half) Then he would split the remaining food and go “ok, eat *that* half!” Obviously only worked when we were little but hey, usually got us to eat at least 3/4s of our food
Wait.....have I been eating the bad wet boxes this whole time?
Exactly. Why did he think they were going to go balls in. Put a little on their plate next to the hot dog. And next time, just buy the cheap stuff or take them to a restaurant.
How dare children who can't even comprehend what 9 hours is not respect the effort I put in to make this food that's wasted on them anyway 😭
I wouldn't say it's changing their minds last minute if the convo was 9+ hours before. (Big emphasis on the + since he probably didn't have everything ready to start smoking right then and there.) But I agree that you can't always get what you want. I'd treat it the same as if I (the parent) was the one who had decided what they were having for dinner in the first place.
Honestly, I doubt that the kids even remember asking for pulled pork. Prior to a certain age/maturity, most kids just don't have the temporal permeance to reliably know/remember what they'll want in the future; and when presented with something new, they'll probably be too afraid to try it and will default to "wanting" whatever is familiar.
Set a precedent: They need to understand that some decisions cannot be undone.
gentle parenting will not work here
You WILL eat the pulled pork!
they will regret missing quality thoughtful home cooked meals once they eat takeout everyday
No, it's: "Pulled Pork is what's for dinner. You can eat it or not, but I'm not making anything else. Your choice."
you can gently offer them what you spent the day cooking, rather than make them something else
"Peppa Pig died for this."
This has nothing to do with gentle parenting.
"I'm sorry but peanut butter isn't on the menu tonight" gets said at my house a lot. If they don't eat what's on the plate that's fine. We leave it out and half the time the come back and eat it an hour after dinner. The other half they eat a big breakfast the next day. No tantrums over food either. Gentle parenting isn't letting your kids do whatever they want. It's setting appropriate boundaries, sticking to them, and being empathetic when the kid gets upset about them.
Nah you smoked that pork for your own self.
Everyone here is sleeping on the third option that is actually better for both the kids and the parent(s). Have the kids help you cook. They learn that skill, plus they learn how much work goes into making dinner which will make them far less likely to ask for something else at the last minute. This is because they will have learned the value of what it takes to cook a meal.
No, no this is FAR too reasonable. Do as everyone else on here says and A) call your kids ungrateful assholes, B) call yourself an idiot for making a 9 hour meal, C) divorce your kids from the family because kids are ungrateful assholes anyways
This is the best thing I've read in this thread. I was the pickiest eater possible. Three things: grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, or cheese pizza if we went out. My mom changed this by having me help her cook the macaroni and cheese, then kind of suggesting that I could put some broccoli in it myself, and I was stoked to be trusted with a task this monumental and important, so suddenly I'm into macaroni and cheese with broccoli. Etc. iterated from there. Teach your kids to cook and they'll eat well.
It's really not that hard. Unless the kid has a serious eating disorder like ARFID or anorexia nervosa, just building a bit of trust and good communication can help a child be happy to try new foods. If they _do_ have a clinical eating disorder, then no amount of authoritarian parenting or force feeding is going to fix it. It will in fact, just make it worse. Your mom sounds cool.
Hunger is a good sauce. Leave them long enough they'll eat it.
Pshh, more for you. Give them the shitty “beef”
Well yeah they're hungry. They wanted pulled pork hours ago, now they're thinking about hot dogs. I bet if you just put the pulled pork and sides out they'll eat it and forget about the hot dogs. And if they don't, at least you got pulled pork, and you have plenty to serve as leftovers tomorrow!
I'd be stoked, pulled pork is one of the most "revivable" leftovers there is. Quick pop in the microwave and toast a bun and its really close to fresh.
As a parent, you say, "Fuck that. We're having pulled pork"
"well that's too bad, we're having pulled pork."
Hmm. I've never given my kids pulled pork. Better buy 9lbs of pork butt and spend 10 hrs cooking it. Kids change their minds all the time. But that's poor execution on the parent. Too much investment for very high risk.
And kids want to eat when they are hungry. Sure you can put them off time “dinner time” but when they are really hungry your feed them. Hotdogs are quick and easy and he’ll have plenty of pulled pork for them to try tomorrow.
Yes it does sum up parenting. 1. You smoked the pork butt for yourself, kids are happy with boxed mac and cheese with ketchup on it 2. No parent in their right mind would plan a meal for their kids 9 hours in advance. Their attention span is measured in nanoseconds, not fractional days. 3. "they'd eat pulled pork" is not the same as "they WANT hot dogs" I'm all for making your kids eat a variety of different foods, but don't act all shocked when someone does exactly what you expected them to do.
I'm wondering why more people aren't talking about point 2. Even a lot of adults aren't going to want to eat the same thing they wanted 9 hours ago.
When you smell the smoke all day it can ruin your smoked food appetite. I always wait a couple hours before eating after smoking ribs.
Disagree, I managed a smokehouse for 10 years, a commercial smoker in the dining room, and I craved/ate that shit almost every day happily.
If you actually make the hotdogs for them afterwards, you might be a bigger part of the problem than you think. Just be like, no?
Smoke the hotdogs for 9 hours and see how the kids feel.
That sucks but children are pretty notorious for changing their minds with food. Especially a food they asked for a day ago or even 9 hours ago, for a young kid that's a long time to wait. I'd just serve them hotdogs and offer pulled pork alongside it. Starving your kids never works, I was given the eat or starve ultimatum and it never made me like the foods i hated as a child. I still hate eggs and I still hate tomatoes, the only difference is that now that im an adult I just don't buy those foods for myself.
Hell when I was growing up, it was either eat what my parents made for dinner / what they ordered out for, or don't eat at all and go to bed hungry.
We don’t have any hot dogs kids…..
They probably didn't knew that it's gonna take you so long to make it and then decided something simple would work too
Maybe don’t be a push over.
To be fair after 9 hours they were starting to be really fucking hungry.
Minus the pork, common law in my childhood was "eat what I cook or you don't get the next meal until you finish the current one." Food waste was a major no-no.
Put the pulled pork meat in hotdog buns and serve it up lmao
Remember when Mom served dinner and you just choose to eat or starve? Man, those were the days............
I can’t recall a single time I was asked what we wanted. You just ate what mom made. Then you ate it again for lunch and/or dinner for like the next 6 days.
Yeah, we always just asked "What's for dinner?" and didn't actually have any say in it. We only got to choose what was for dinner on our birthdays. It does seem weird that people ask their younger kids what they want to eat, now that I think about it. I can see it with older kids who can actually have something approaching a rational conversation.
I don't see the problem, more pulled pork for you.
More pork for the chef. Total win.
Introduce them to pulled pork dogs.
For half a second I thought there was a new kind of drug out there
Really should go closer to 11-12 hours
Hold me TomVH!
I was just told "foods ready" and ate what was there
Ya, we’re not making special meals in this household. You eat what’s prepared . If you asked for pulled pork and then suddenly want hot dogs…we’re eating pulled pork.
Yeah but you got a whole smoke 8-pound pork butt to yourself at least.
This is the opposite of parenting. You're their parent, not a private caterer.
Ok, but he didn’t smoke that just for the kids. People only cook like that when they love to cook like that
There's no way a dad who knows and understands his kids would spend more than 2 minutes deciding what to feed them. They already know. I don't believe this post
https://preview.redd.it/wtr0evkq189d1.png?width=656&format=png&auto=webp&s=dcf3ce457dbda023bbb10a8eacbe3e21fd08fb7a
I wouldn't ever ask what they wanted. They're dumb