That happened with Morganna with her grandmothers and father–they catered to her pickiness long past toddlerhood into childhood, and she would eat very few foods with them. When she was with me, I would not give in to her demands for just Wendy’s food and baked chicken with marinara sauce.

I took her out to eat Indian food, I cooked Chinese food, and I made good Italian foods, and she ate like a little starving child. I remember the first time we took her to eat at Akbar when she was nine, and she ate two huge plates of food from the buffet table, and then started in on the kheer and gulab jamon. The waiters, who knew Zak and I by name, were amazed–and started bringing her little things from the kitchen to try, just to see if she would eat them.

Sweet potato pakora–gobbled down. Pooris–the same. Egg curry–gone.

They asked her if she ate Indian food like this all the time, and she looked at them and shook her head soberly and said, “This is the first time.”

After that, every time she visited us, we went to Akbar nearly every day of her visit so she could see her friends the waiters, and eat about her weight in delicious food.

So, I keep telling myself that it is a phase, while I remember Kat gobbling down curries as a baby, curries and dal and tofu and all that great stuff.

Fernmonkey–you made me laugh out loud, too, for several reasons. For one, my nickname in the Salaam kitchen, given by my daughter, Morganna, one of my line cooks was Field Marshall Rommel, because of my booming voice, very erect carriage and very military way of running the kitchen–very efficient and fast. (That and I admire Rommel’s abilities as a tactician.)

And because of a famous quote from my Great Aunt Emma, whose parents still spoke German and who herself could read it and speak it a little, which said to my Aunt Judy in her childhood when discussing WWI. Aunt Emma, a very small, smiling dimpling woman apparently drew herself up when Aunt Judy asked if our family (who all have the same erect carriage and military efficiency that I exhibit in the kitchen) were like the military men of WWI–and said, “My dear, we Fishers are Bavarian–NOT Prussian.”

And back to your actual comment–parenting strategies do indeed fall apart just as easily as battle plans when exposed to the enemy–I mean–children.

Which still makes me laugh.

I don’t think that any parenting plan survives contact with the children.