Care and Feeding: I’ve had it with friends who insist on separate meals for their kids.

[purlewe]

Dear Care and Feeding,

My wife and I feel that preparing a meal and sitting down with our young kids to eat together is a valuable thing. We refuse to be short order cooks or prepare separate kid-friendly meals, but always try to prepare something that the kids like. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but for the most part our kids are good eaters and our dinners are enjoyable.

We spend a lot of time with other families, in situations where one family is responsible for preparing a meal for the group. Many of our friends’ kids are picky eaters, and this is reinforced by parents who prepare or expect special kid-friendly meals in addition to the main meal.
We’re happy to relax our routine in almost every way for these hangouts, but I am not comfortable going out of my way to prepare a second meal. This always leads to problems. If I’m cooking, their kids make a scene about the food being disgusting—or the parents just bring along kid food that they prepare or that I am expected to prepare. Without fail this special kid meal becomes a thing, even if my kids like the regular meal.

My wife is more gracious than I am, and I’m pretty sure the right answer is to just be accommodating. But to me, eating a meal as a family and hosting friends is an important social event where kids are learning how to exist together in the world.
Preparing a separate kid meal signals that they are more special than everyone else, or that they never have to be anything less than completely satisfied. It says that in group situations, the welfare of the group comes second to their happiness and that there is no expectation to be polite or grateful to your host.

I realize that this is a sort of over-the-top framing. I also realize there is a counterargument here about being an accommodating host. But accommodating picky kids strikes me as different than being mindful of legitimate dietary restrictions, which is an important act of putting others first. I think it’s somewhat rude to expect other people to prepare a special meal for your picky kids and it breeds a sense of entitlement that really bugs me. What do you think?
-Just Eat Up

Dear JEU
I could not agree with you more. Mealtimes are a wonderful human rite. It can be a great pleasure to share them with your kids. They can also be instructive, teaching your kids to situate themselves within a larger group or even, simply, the basics of etiquette that will serve them well as adults. I’d go further: I find food a great joy, a deep pleasure, and teaching your kids to enjoy meals is a bit like teaching them to value art or appreciate music, a way to have a rich life.

This is a hot button topic. Every letter I answer about food, I see a million responses about sensory processing disorders, or gluten intolerances, or the importance of teaching your kids volition (forcing them to eat broccoli is teaching them to be put-upon! Maybe it’s outright abuse!).

I have little tolerance for these arguments. Yes, some kids reject foods to which they have a sensitivity, and if they’re too young to have the language to explain this, their intransigence can seem arbitrary. Yes, honoring those sensitivities (or, of course, allergies) is non-negotiable. Sure, taste is subjective and some people just don’t like fish, or tomatoes, or papaya, or what have you. But what parents of that kid who only eats chicken tenders seem reluctant to admit is that just giving them chicken tenders is easier on their family. Not everyone has sensory processing disorder!

I don’t blame them—parenting is demanding, and sometimes you give up a battle. That’s fine, if you only ever eat at home, or are prepared for a decade of packing chicken tenders every time you leave the house for a meal. But it’s appalling to let your kid describe the food they’re being provided as disgusting;not acceptable at home, and certainly not when you’re a guest. If you’re going to indulge your child’s pickiness, that’s your choice, but it’s incumbent on you to be sure this doesn’t manifest as rudeness. It’s your family’s problem to solve.

I guess I’m mixed on when your guests bring along their own kid meal. It’s still rude on the face of it, but these are your friends. I get that it’s disruptive and irritating, but you’re willing to relax for the sake of having fun, so maybe you should just make the rule that it’s fine if they want to bring pasta with butter on it (sad), but they ought to bring enough for all the kids..

 

Comments

[cereta]

Yyyeah, as the mother of a picky eater, I think I would solve this in two ways:

If people are eating at my house, I try to provide a variety of food that can accommodate different tastes, even if is just means, "here's some butter you can put on the spaghetti instead of covering it in Cincinnati Chili," or having a bowl of grape tomatoes in addition to the broccoli.

As a parent, I would honestly just stop going to meals at the LW's house. If even me bringing food for my kid is asking too much of their philosophical objections, then I guess we can just forgo that bonding time. Seriously, does LW never have adults who don't care for the entree or a particular side? Do they get their nose out of joint if one guest only has salad/sides because they don't care for salmon? How often does LW choke down something they find disgusting just for the sake of social convention?

Seriously, this is a thing for me. My parents used to regularly make me eat things I absolutely hated, and it wasn't until I was eight that I realized that, you know, if my mom or dad didn't like a food, we just didn't have that food for dinner. So how come I had to eat lima beans, which literally make me gag? I expect my kid to try new things, but I'm not going to make her eat something that is unpleasant to her.

[minoanmiss]

Yeah, providing a variety is both sensible and fun (if one likes cooking, and if not, why cook for a get-together in the first place)?

I do feel for the LW about kids calling the food they made "disgusting," though. Even from little kids that kind of insult stings a cook's tender heart. The parents really should correct their children when they're being actively rude.

[fred_mouse]

You, I like you.

I have two picky eaters, although the way they are picky differs. The elder one was a 'gag on vegetables' child. Unlike their grandparents, who were the 'I cooked it, you eat it, what, do you think we are made of money' type, I worked around it -- Eldest ate a lot of carrots. And now, I have an adult who will eat a range of vegetables, while their other (non-household) parent can manage potatoes. Youngest is starting to look like they have FODMAPs issues, but as a little kid they didn't have any nuance other than 'I don't like it'.

And our meals together with friends used to have lots of 'pick your own' variety, so there was never little kids being fussy, at least, not where I had to deal with it. But that might be because amongst the group are people who are vegetarian, gluten free, lactose intolerant, allergic to eggs, allergic to peanuts, have issues with soy, can't have cucumber/celery/capsicum/coriander/mint, can't have onions/garlic.

And the letter doesn't get anywhere near 'little kids have better taste buds'. 'Disgusting' here could just mean 'too much garlic/spice/mustard/flavour'. Or it could be like my kid who wouldn't touch onion -- which has turned out to be the canary in the coalmine, in that all three kids have issues with onion.

[xenacryst]

Maybe ... maybe ... maybe ... MAYBE IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FOOD.

I remember being 9 and my parents having dinner parties. Now, I am, and for the most part always have been, a pretty damned adventurous eater (when my mom told me to make a salad dressing for the first time she pointed at the spice rack and said have at it; I came back with a cinnamon based dressing which blew our socks off). I loved eating an artichoke at these parties, and then ... and then I was full, I was bored, it was late, and I was tired. I didn't want to hang around the grownups discussion about whatever boring thing it was, and I wanted to go read or play or something, and anyway I was done with food. And, yanno, I don't think that was a problem.

So, maybe try to see this from the kids' points of view. You're hosting a boring-ass get together and the only thing saving these kids from dying of ennui is the fact that they get to eat together and don't have to worry about food.

[cereta]

Or even if it is about the food, you're not going to get considerate, polite human beings by...completely disregarding their likes and dislikes.

(Also, buttered noodles are delicious. They're even better with garlic and maybe some white wine, but buttered pasta? Yummy.)

[grammarwoman]

Wow, this isn't a volatile topic AT ALL. *eyeroll*

How gracious of CaF to mention sensory processing disorder, and then how shitty of them to just dismiss it. Tell you what, you raise a kid on the autism spectrum who until about the age of six or so, puked (involuntarily or not) when they ate something they didn't like, and see how well that goes over when you travel to other people's houses. A gracious host, I think, will gladly let parents bring something they know their kid will eat rather than have a Monty Python skit enacted at their table.

Sure, kids should be raised to say "no thank you" and not call offered food disgusting. I also think some communication on the subject should go on between guests and hosts; I would never presume that the host would just whip up something without notice.

Additionally, it would be great if children at least tried everything (more than six times, yes, I've read all the goddamned parenting advice), but that's not the hand a lot of us were dealt. If you can't explain to your kid that the other underage eaters have some issues with food, then that's your parenting failure.

Seriously! Rude to bring food! Screw you and the high horse you rode in on.

[cimorene]

+1 to all of this. I also think that a kid shouldn't have to have a processing disorder to be allowed to have preferences. There's a difference between just trying it once and refusing more and actually disliking a particular flavor or texture and there's plenty more food in the world! My parents also went to a lot of 'kid-friendly' dinner parties when my sister and I were children, and hosted them too, and I don't think we ever ran into anybody who was THIS much of an asshole about it (although there were people they vowed never to eat with again so maybe I've just blocked it out). In my experience, it was the norm for parents to bring kid food just in case and hosts to accomodate kids to a reasonable degree if they happen to have something else around - not preparing a whole second meal, I mean like letting them have some leftovers or cereal or, yeah, plain noodles with butter, which is hardly a huge effort.

[melannen]

I am unclear as to what kind of gatherings these are.

Like, if there are adult get-together dinner parties, then "Adults have adult meal, kids have kid meal" is perfectly reasonable and how those parties have generally always gone? The kids' table at a dinner party is not a brand-new invention of the modern snowflake generation, it just used to be in the nursery where the adults didn't have to even see it. Older kids earning a place at the adult table through learning politeness and unpickiness is a rite of passage.

If these are kid-focused get-togethers, or something like that, you should make a meal everyone can enjoy, and plan it around the kids. And you should be able to communicate enough to figure out what that looks like in advance of the meal.

If it's some kind of, idk, cohousing or communal childcare situation or something, where you're having a fair number of your everyday meals together, then you all need to come together and compromise on how the menu planning and labor division are going to work, and come up with a method of doing it that works for everyone. "We refuse to be [your kind of] cooks" is not an attitude that works in that kind of situation.

[cereta]

Yeah, I'm a little vague on what kind of gatherings these are. They sound like random dinner parties, if for no other reason than because holiday gatherings tend to have very common menus.

[ambyr]

. If I’m cooking, their kids make a scene about the food being disgusting

...LW, is it possible you're just not a very good cook?

[conuly]

I must admit, I'm curious as to what LW's habitually preparing such that nothing on the table is suitable for these children.

LW's friends need to tell their kids not to say food is "disgusting" at the table. LW needs to get over themself. All of them need to start meeting up at the playground instead of the dinner table.

[melannen]

I do know quite a few kids who eat only a very limited diet (usually involving, yes, chicken fingers, maybe peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread, but not butter on a dinner roll or any other form of chicken.) I didn't blink at the idea they have nothing they will eat.

Some of these kids probably do have medical/sensory issues and would be miserable if forced to branch out, or need to try new things in much more controlled circumstances than a dinner party. Some of them are probably just unadventurous eaters, who if given no choice would branch out, but whose parents don't want to make them, and so have never learned that it's worth trying. Some of them are probably unadventurous eaters who are just on the edge of having a diagnosable medical/sensory issue, which made it a lot harder for the parents to get them to try new things, but will probably be labelled 'just a picky eater' for a long time.

But yeah, if she's serving anything other than chicken nuggets, it's extremely likely there's at least one kid who won't eat any of it, and will describe anything else as "gross". (And there's probably at least one kid who won't or can't eat chicken nuggets either.)

(Also, I've been thinking about this since the last "picky eaters at a shared meal" letter we had, but it's really not that unusual for someone to make a meal with nothing that someone else can/will eat? It just takes one or two objections to your host's favorite seasonings. If you don't like, say, anything with onion, anything with mayonnaise, or anything sour, you could easily not have any options left on a traditional White American table. Except the chicken.

And a lot of people don't like things they haven't had before - which describes a lot of kids, and fair on them, but also applies to a lot of people who have food/sensory sensitivities that aren't diagnosed, so they think of themselves as omnivores but also know if they try new things they will probably regret it all night. Someone who's cooking trendy stuff or trying to show off is likely to not have anything familiar enough that they feel comfortable with it.

And this could be true even if they're trying to do 'kid-friendly' meals - i.e., a lot of people think of spaghetti with red sauce as something familiar that everyone can eat, but there are so many different ways to do red sauce that a lot of 'picky eaters' avoid it unless they know from experience the sauce is safe. An adult will work around it or suck it up and take a lot of antacid on the way home, a little kid is going to say "gross I only like Mom's kind."

It used to be you could count on at least a dinner roll, but people are less and less likely to automatically have white-bread dinner rolls.)

[redbird]

I'm not clear on whether this is about LW wanting all the kids to eat the more grown-up meals she cooks (in which case my sympathy is with the other kids and their parents); or whether it's LW making a meal more suited to children's tastes, and resenting being asked to cook three other meals, one for each of the visiting children. If the latter, I definitely sympathize with LW; it's one thing to say, I brought a baloney sandwich for my kid, and another to want LW to do lots of extra cooking and cleaning.

I am dubious about people who say "legitimate dietary restrictions," as if they were a better judge of other people's health needs, religious beliefs, and so on than those people and their doctors. It's plausible to say "if this is health-related, let me know and I'll do my best to make it work; if it's religious or ethical, or you just don't live vegetables, I won't make you eat anything, but you might need to eat beforehand and just come for the company." But if I like you enough to invite you for a meal, I will assume you're telling the truth if you say you can't eat shrimp.

[cereta]

It sounds like even the baloney sandwich irritates the LW. Which, I mean, if it prompts other kids to say, "I want a baloney sandwich, too," I get, but it sounds to me like LW's idea of "accommodating" is...not so much.

[lilysea]

When I was 10, an adult in authority insisted I eat a food - cauliflower in cheesy sauce - despite me telling them it would make me vomit.

I vomited all over the plate. It was dramatic.

[The adult got angry, which I felt was very unfair - I HAD WARNED THEM]

The moral of the story: sometimes letting kids have bread and butter or noodles or rice is less disruptive than insisting they eat something and then watching them vomit at the dinner table while everyone else is eating.

[melannen]

We live in an area where crab is the regional delicacy, so whenever I was a kid and we had out-of-state visitors, my mom made crab.

I told her crab was gross and yucky and I didn't want to eat it, and she said I had to try it anyway.

I vomited on two visiting uncles in a row.

After that, we had a kids' option on crab nights, and I was allowed to veto any seafood I didn't want.

The moral of the story for kids is: if your adults need to learn a lesson about kids' food sensitivities, do some targeted vomiting.

[lilysea]

I remember going to dinner at my parents friends house when I was 9 or 10.

The only food was a heavily spiced Hungarian beef goulash with onion and paprika. I genuinely couldn't make myself eat it.

I asked politely for more bread and butter [everyone had gotten a single slice of plain white supermarket bread and butter with the goulash] and was rudely refused by the so-called hosts because "You're not special, you can eat what everyone else is eating! Don't be spoiled!"

The result was that I felt like I was not-a-person in their eyes, like I had no value or worth in their eyes, and that I went hungry for hours.

I'm 43 now, and I'm still grumpy at the hosts when I remember that story.

[minoanmiss]

"You're not special, you can eat what everyone else is eating! Don't be spoiled!"

What an abysmal way to treat a guest. I am horrified on your behalf!

[kiezh]

My sympathies are entirely with the kids, and both the letter and the answer are appalling. These assholes think they and they alone are the authorities on whether or not kids have "real" sensitivities/allergies/sensory processing disorders, and of course their (totally objective and expert!) judgements fall consistently on the side of "everyone who inconveniences me is a spoiled lying brat."

Also: it is BAD FUCKING HOSPITALITY to socially pressure people (kids or adults, but kids get a ton of it) to choke down foods that nauseate them. I was on the wrong side of this a lot as a kid, and you know when I got confrontational and rude with the "disgusting" language? After my overbearing hosts got rude and confrontational over my efforts to low-key avoid foods that smelled bad to me and eat some rolls or something. They were pretty damn free with the accusations that I was a Bad Guest for not eating what was put in front of me, but boy did they go NUCLEAR if I pointed out the ways they were violating the principles of being a good host. Gee, I wonder if the real issue here isn't hospitality and togetherness at all, but power dynamics and the desire to Make Kids Submit!

Ugh, that was definitely a sore spot. I haven't been a kid awkwardly sitting at some very rude person's table and wishing they would leave me alone to eat my pb&j sandwich in decades, but wow do the memories linger.

Stop being a jerk about the food, LW. Make what you want to make, tell people the menu ahead of time, and KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT when people bring something else for their personal consumption. You don't know their reasons and you don't need to. Be a fucking gracious host.

(And stop power-tripping over how you can make kids do stuff they don't wanna. That doesn't make you an awesome strong parent who's better than all those weak over-permissive parents, it just makes you someone who gets a kick out of coercion and has convenient victims to hand.)

[cimorene]

Yep. Total assholes. The LW is a judgmental jerk, but at least they wrote for a second opinion, so the C&F answerer is worse, because they're setting themselves up as some kind of impartial authority.

[lilysea]

If you/your kids have allergies; food intolerances; or sensory issues around food, it is NOT rude to bring food you know that you can eat/you know your kids can eat to someone else's house, as long as:

a) you're not bring eg peanuts to the home of someone with a lifethreatening nut allergy

b) you're not bringing pork to a kosher or halal household

c) you're not bringing something strong smelling that your host has warned you gives them nausea/migraines

d) you're not bringing meat to the home of a die hard vegetarian

[beable]

Oh my God.

I don't keep kosher, but I once had houseguests for a weekend, one of whom kept kosher (the other was her goyish husband so he kept kosher in terms of eating meals with spouse but not necessarily when eating outside the house on his own).

I made a point of consulting with her and kashering my house (to the point of even borrowing glass dishes that could be kashered from a friend since my dishes couldn't be made kosher) and - since I didn't have the room or setup to do both milk and meat - we set up a milk (vegetarian food and fish , absolutely no meat) kosher household for the weekend, so that $kosher_friend could safely eat.

A couple of friends of these same houseguests took the opportunity to come to town while they were visiting so they could visit them. They turned up on my doorstep with potato-cheese-bacon perogies and expected to cook them in my hitcken. Apparently there was a long-running shtick with them enjoying feeding goyish husband unkosher food.

I was more than a little stupified. Stupefied became pissed when - after they were done - they left all the gross (bacon is gross smelling and even under optimal circumstances I would not have wanted it cooked in my home, yuk yuk yuk, super yuk ) cooking and eating dishes in the sink for me to deal with in a siutation where I couldn't even let the dishwasher deal with it (because the dishwasher was for kosher dishes).

($Kosher_houseguest expressed dismay and surprise that bacon-bringing friends hadn't cleaned up after themselves, and offered to call them back and make them to do. I clarified that those particular friends were no longer welcome in my home, and that the dishwasher was now trafe because OMG frigging bacon perogie dishes and we would friggin just hand-wash the kosher plates)

[rosefox]

By the time I got to the end of this I was chanting "fuck you fuck you fuck you" in my head so I don't even really have a coherent response beyond that. I'm going to go eat some gluten-free noodles with fake butter.

[ashbet]

Oh, man. I got so much criticism for my daughter’s “picky” eating and white-food diet (they didn’t have to clean up after the chronic vomiting!), which turned out to be undiagnosed, severe GERD.

I can understand not wanting to COOK multiple meals, but guests who bring their own kids’ food are not violating the rules of hospitality.

The LW sounds like a rigid, power-tripping asshole.

[rmc28]

I would stop accepting invitations to eat with LW ...

[rmc28]

"Preparing a separate kid meal signals that they are more special than everyone else, or that they never have to be anything less than completely satisfied"

I prepare my children separate meals because I care that they *eat* and because I am aware that they both struggle a lot with everyday expectations on them by society and school and at least I can give them food at home each day that they like and enjoy.

I don't think LW or CaF would like me and my children much. I certainly don't think we'd be a good fit for LW's circle of dinner party friends.

[cereta]

What you said. We have more or less entered a phase of, "if you don't like what I made, you can scramble yourself some eggs," but that is also coupled with making meal adjustments for the small fanperson's taste (making sure there is dark meat when I make chicken, waiting until she's gotten her pasta before I add a sauce if she doesn't care for the sauce I'm making). I mean, this is a kid who's barely ON the percentile chart for weight. Damn straight I want her to eat.

[conuly]

Then LW needs to start planning to have her friends bring food for their kids.

[beable]

I realize that this is a sort of over-the-top framing

Really LW, ya think?

[azurelunatic]

LW does not deserve friends.

[neotoma]

As a person who would not eat cooked peas as a child (frozen was fine) and has a brother who would only eat things with ketchup for 2 years, I want to tell LW to get over themself.

If the parents are bringing food their kids are able to eat, congratulations, you only have to provide a beverage they can drink and a plate they can eat off of.

[jamoche]

Lifehacker weighs in on the side of the kids:

https://offspring.lifehacker.com/yes-you-should-accommodate-your-friends-picky-eating-k-1841204883