In which I expose all the ways I do it wrong, in the hopes of maybe making someone feel better about they way they're doing it wrong too

Yesterday I happened upon It's Not About Nutrition. As I perused a few posts, I could see that this lady knew what she was talking about. When I got to one called For extreme fruit and vegetable avoiders, I was inspired to leave a comment, in the vague hope that she would solve all my problems - because Monkey is nothing if not an extreme fruit and vegetable avoider. (Unless he's an extreme meat, fish, eggs, and cheese avoider. Or a superhero obsessive. He goes by many names, my son.)

Here's my somewhat sad and pathetic question:

Hi Dina. I like what you have to say and would be most grateful for your input in my situation. My son seems very sensitive to smells. He's also a stubborn four-year-old, so I'm not sure exactly what issues I'm dealing with, but ever since he started solids he's been mostly uninterested in food (looooved the boob for a long time) and has refused to even try almost everything other than carbs. He now lives basically on peanut-butter sandwiches (wheat bread, natural pb), breakfast cereal (not the terribly sugary ones), apple juice and milk.

He's never eaten meat, fish, eggs, cheese, or vegetables. He used to eat apples, but hasn't gone near any fruit for a long time. I can't even get him to sit at the table when we're eating other food - especially if it smells of, well, food - so putting something on his plate is a lost cause. I know I've gone wrong, but there never seemed to be an opportunity to go right. Where do I start? (His little sister is a better eater, so I know it's not all my fault...)

And look at this - she answered me:

I'm not an expert on smell sensitivity but I do know that the basic approach is to gradually broaden your son's exposure. But, it sounds like you have other things going on as well. Most importantly, your son is very strong-willed, as you point out. It sounds like there is a lot of control going on too.

I recommend that you start switching up what foods you feed him within his limited diet. If you need to use breakfast foods for lunch, or dinner foods for breakfast, do it. Tell him that now he's old enough to eat like a big boy he has to eat different things for different meals. Don't introduce anything new. Use this technique for a few weeks to break the routine.

Then, slowly start making him stay in the vicinity of food he doesn't want to eat. Start with foods he used to eat, and especially, foods that aren't smelly. An apple is a good example. Insist on good behavior. Make clear the consequences of a tantrum (a timeout or some other appropriate correction). It's ok to reward good behavior too. For instance, every time that he doesn't have a tantrum around food he doesn't like he can earn a star towards something desirable. Remember, don't ask him to eat anything (it's behavior you're rewarding) and don't use food as the reward.

Once these two steps are in place you can begin thinking about how to introduce new foods. Let me know if you want to talk on the phone further about any of this.

Best of luck,

Dina

Isn't that nice? Don't you just love the internet, where you can ask experts random questions and get responses really quickly? The interesting part - to me - maybe you don't care about my thought processes, but you're here, so you get to hear about them - is that I thought I knew what she was going to tell me, and I had already decided that I didn't want to hear it. (Stubborn? Where would he get that from?) I thought she'd tell me that I had to make him sit at the table while we ate our food, even if he ate nothing - which I suppose is what she's aiming for, but she starts out more gently than that.

Leaving aside the practicalities of "making" him do anything - we had a star chart once, but it didn't really go anywhere - I agree that I could discuss it with him and try again, but like an addict, he has to want to get better, and he really couldn't care less if he lives out his whole life eating nothing but peanut-butter and bread. In fact, that probably sounds ideal to him, especially if once he's grown up I won't be able to deny him all the cookies and candy he'd like too.

Sorry, that sentence got derailed back there. Leaving aside the practicalities of "making" him do anything, as I was saying, I don't know if I feel like disrupting our lives that much right now. Here's where you get to feel all superior, because I bet you're stricter about this than I am.

After about three-and-a-half years of angsting and blaming myself and not weaning because it was the only nourishment he got (among other reasons) and searching desperately every day for something to feed him, some time last year we arrived at quite a nice calm place in our mealtime routine. Monkey has breakfast cereal and half a cup of apple juice for breakfast. He has a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, and apple juice, and a tiny dessert item of black-bean brownie or pumpkin bread. He may have a snack in the afternoon - something carby, no doubt, and often a drink of honey milk. And for dinner he has the same as lunch. Vitamins every day. Now and then something different like a bagel or french fries - hey, that's a vegetable! - and now and then some junk for a treat. He doesn't get junk often, but I don't ban it entirely, because that's just asking for trouble. Also, hypocritcal.

These days he usually eats on the step between the kitchen and the family room - my compromise between not letting them eat in the carpeted family room but allowing them to sit and watch the TV sometimes. Now he prefers the step to the table, even with the TV off. Sometimes, if what we're eating is particularly fragrant, he takes his food into the dining room, and I think how lovely it is to have a dining room.

I admit I've fallen off the "dinner at the table" wagon with him. Mabel eats at the table, but usually earlier than B and I eat ours. But here's the thing: I don't care all that much right now. This is not a failing that eats away at my soul and burns into my brain in the wee hours of the morning. I do, very much, value good table manners, and I want children who will sit politely at a meal in a restaurant or someone else's house, and use their cutlery properly, and quietly leave on their plate whatever they don't eat, and eat with their mouths closed and not talk with their mouths full. But this is so far, so very very far ahead of us, that I'm not going to stress myself out about it right now.

Right now I will settle for letting us get through our meal without killing each other, for not throwing knives across the room, for not standing on the table. At home or in public. The rest will come in time.

So will I implement Dina's advice? I'll think about it. I'll discuss a star chart with Monkey and see what we come up with. I'm happy she answered me and didn't say, "Get thee to a psychiatrist stat because that sort of behaviour is documented to go along with psychosis and spawn-of-satan children."

I know I'm not the strictest of parents, and there are many areas where I constantly vaguely intend to do better, and constantly fail (hoovering the family room, for instance). But my Monkey is a bright, interested, loving, thoughtful kid who's finding his own way in this confusing world; I have faith in both of us that he'll come out okay at the other end, and that some day in the distant future, he and I will appreciate a Thai curry or a rhubarb crumble together. With a nice glass of wine or a good beer, perhaps.