My 18 mo old toddler eats a pleasingly wide variety of foods, although it’s hard to tell what she’ll want on any given day. We give her a bit of whatever we’re eating and let her decide if she likes it. It’s our first step to enforcing the Three Rules of Eating In Harry’s House:
1. You don’t have to like it.
2. How do you know if you haven’t tried it? (Exceptions granted for, say, known dislike of spicy.)
3. Feel free to jazz it up; spices on the counter, hot sauces in the fridge.

It’ll be interesting to see how it works. As a kid I was *really* picky and didn’t eat a great deal either. I remember when I was about 5, sitting in a Chinese restaurant, watching my parents dunk beef in water because I didn’t like the icky sauce. I wonder what I’ll do when confronted by that? Probably make sure my kid tries it and if it’s not a hit, order zir something ze does like. But what if all ze’ll eat is white rice?

So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we manage a good middle ground between food variety and control issues.

I don’t find it difficult to believe that “pickiness” in children is genetic. My two older children (25 and 21) will eat anything and everything, especially my daughter. Then again, neither I nor their father are picky eaters. My youngest son (13), however, has ALWAYS been a picky eater – and so is his father. From the time I started to feed him solid food (and I NEVER gave my kids “baby cereal” – library paste is a more correct description – or other jarred baby foods) he would gag and fuss; it practically took an act of congress to get him to try anything new once he DID take a liking to something. For awhile, I had visions of him as a 32-year-old man who would eat nothing but scrambled eggs, peanut butter and bread (no jelly for this kid for years), cubes of cheddar cheese, hamburger patties, spaghetti (with butter and a little garlic only, thank you) and the occasional banana.

Needless to say, it’s somewhat better now, although he went through a phase at about 10 years old where he wanted to drown everything in barbecue sauce, which is one of the few condiments he’ll eat – he wouldn’t even eat ketchup until he tried it at a friend’s house (and still in very small amounts). He is expected to try whatever is put in front of him, and if he doesn’t like it, he can fend for himself or not eat at all. As a result, he’ll eat things like Vietnamese pho and pad thai, if he’s allowed to pick the garnishments for them.

We’ve had one experience, though, that makes me think that there’s an element of the “power struggle” in it all, though. We took him to a Japanese restaurant recently (he’s in to all thinks Japanese these days) and sat at one of the hibachi tables with the knife wielding chef, who tossed vegetable after vegetable on his plate – and he wolfed them down. This is the same kid who, when confronted with a stir-fried or grilled vegetable from Mom, sighs and picks listlessly at it in an attempt to fulfill the “at least try it” rule. When we confronted him with this, he looked me dead in the eye and said “Well, I don’t want to insult the chef.”

Is he lucky he’s still alive? Oh, yeah…