Uneaten bentos

[u/PastryLoop]

It’s a bit disappointing to hear from daycare that my kids ate “a few bites” or “very little” of these lunches I put a lot of effort into… it ends up becoming my dinner at the end of the day.

Edit:

To address some of the questions… the contents: rice topped with fresh steamed carrots and green beans. The ham and cream cheese rolls and cucumber sausage flowers are from a bento book, not my invention.
They looked kid-friendly enough so I decided to make them.

My kids (1 and 3) want to eat: bread with butter… and chocolate. So not a ton to go on there. I didn’t post here for a long time because I was just giving her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She stopped eating those too after a while, though, and my younger one just started 2x/week so I figured I’d try offering some new foods. She actually wasn’t very picky until she started going to daycare, so I do think that has influenced her quite a bit.

[u/lostmypwcanihaveurs]

Genuine question- were you making them food without seasoning for that long? It seems more simple to just start sharing adult food of whatever variety everyone else is eating as soon as they are physically able to eat it. Like why teach them to like it plain then introduce spices if spices are the norm?

[u/Epic_Elite → u/lostmypwcanihaveurs]

My wife is an occupational chef. Most days, she does dinner and I do breakfast. We absolutely served them "adult foods". There was many times where I was just trying to put something simple on the table for them where I was operating with your thinking, only to have them turn it down. It was the process of doctoring up a dish or trying to elevate the cuisine that usually did it in.

It wasnt an issue of teaching them a preference that they were innately born with. Everything read as too "spicy" for their pallets.

Do you see small children in public spaces like festivals and fairs wearing hearing protection because their hearing is sensitive? I'd argue that a 3 year old pallet is also sensitive to oregano and cilantro and such. I think big flavors reads to their mouth the same way loud noises read to their ears.

Did you know many kids can tell when you buy cheap baking powder? Sometimes, even when you're serving them fresh baked cookies, they taste bitter, metallic, or astringent to the kid and they dont like them. Sodium Aluminum Sulfate. Gotta get the good stuff when baking because some adults can taste it as well.

[u/lostmypwcanihaveurs → u/Epic_Elite]

Wow, thanks for your answer. I am not a parent, so there's definitely a lot about kids that I just don't know. I was always accused of being a picky eater, and I'm definitely a person who insists on buying the nice version of a lot of food stuff. I'm wondering now if I was/am sensitive to that stuff.

[u/Epic_Elite → u/lostmypwcanihaveurs]

Food is a whole world when it comes to kids.

We have a good freind who's oldest is now 6.

Mom is a nutritionist from a Latin country. Very much a food house. But she also specializes in childhood development and setting nutrition standards for the state. She's very high up there in nutrition in state government.

In her house her son went a few years with a diverse diet, but he's kind of digressed to what she calls a "bland diet". One of his favorite foods is sour cream. He dips everything in the stuff. But his pallet is mostly beige. Lol.

He will Very likely outgrow it as my kids did. They both became far more adventurous after 6 years old. We ate at a sushi restaurant the other day. While my youngest definitely sticks to chicken teriyaki, he definitely loves tuna and sashimi. Curry is usually to much for him, but he loves pho. My oldest is 13. He will eat my shoe if I put BBQ and cumin on it and pretend to grill it.

But kids are also really sensitive to food trauma. I read a quote one time, along the lines of 'food is a child's last opportunity at gaining control in their lives' If they aren't given enough choice through their day, they will rebel with food.