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.

[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.)

[xenacryst]

My kid loves buttered noodles (and at this age now also loves pasta with a good variety of sauces). When we'd go out to our former favorite restaurant where they had lots of different great things, she'd always order buttered noodles and I'd quietly despair* of getting protein into her and her not trying all the other good things they had. And then, I realized that we were going out to eat because we thought it was something special, and each of us was getting something special from the menu, and her special thing was buttered noodles.

* I didn't despair, as such, because I've always had a pretty relaxed relationship with food, and even more so when it's other people's food. But I'd slightly raise an internal eyebrow when it was always buttered noodles. But, buttered noodles are delicious, so there.

[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.

[xenacryst]

Yeah, calling something someone else made specially for you disgusting is not cool. Once I made my special pancakes for my cousin and his family, and while all the grownups liked them, his kids weren't thrilled - they weren't the pancakes they were used to. But they quietly said no thanks after a couple of bites, and requested some cereal or something that they knew they'd like.

[zooey_glass]

Buttered noodles with cheddar are my 'treat' lunch when I'm home alone! Yum yum.

[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.

[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.

[shirou]

I agree, but also I think if a friend's child calls your food disgusting, it's a good excuse to engage (at a later time) in a little self-satisfied grumbling about how your kids have better manners and would never say such a thing. You still shouldn't get upset about an eight-year-old's comment. Kids say insensitive things! They're little jerks sometimes.

My wife and I do usually ask our kids to eat what we eat, with an emphasis on "usually." LW sounds insanely rigid. We don't make our kids eat foods they truly hate, and we certainly don't expend any energy worrying about what our friends' kids eat. Good grief.

[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?

[darchildre]

Yeah - I was an extremely picky eater as a child and remain an extremely picky eater as an adult. My parents drilled into me early and often that the only acceptable comment on a food you don't like is, "No thank you, I wouldn't care for any".

(I would dread dining at OP's house for my own self, let alone any potential children - I realize that I am difficult to accommodate and try to make things easier on my host by always packing emergency backup food in case I can't eat what they're serving. If that was going to turn into A Thing, I would stop eating with them entirely.)

[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.

[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.

[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]

Oh, yeah, the "better taste buds" is really a thing I have noticed since the small fanperson was born, because both her father and I like really strongly flavored food, from tons of garlic to tikka masala to very lemony lemon chicken. I've gotten into the habit of cooking a separate pan of chicken thighs (I usually use breasts in most dishes) and seasoning them with just salt and a little pepper. She's slowly developing preferences around salad that might lead to some different flavors, but she is definitely still in the land of buttery noodles.

[cereta]

Oh, definitely, but that's just kind of manners that can be pulled out from food. Kids shouldn't say someone's furniture is shabby or that their clothes are ugly, either.

[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.

[cereta]

There's definitely a difference between, "You like spaghetti; I'm not getting you pizza when we're having a food you like" and "you will sit at this table until you eat my very bland meatloaf that you hate."* The former is cool. The latter, IMHO, not so much.

*I have spent my adulthood learning that in many cases, I do not so much dislike a food as I disliked the way my mother made it. I love her, but she's definitely a MidWest hamburger casserole cook.

[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.

[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.

[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.)

[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.

[conuly]

it's really not that unusual for someone to make a meal with nothing that someone else can/will eat?

I don't think so. It's trivially easy to add a bowl of rice or noodles and some bread rolls (as you stated) to the table, and most people can eat plain white rice or noodles or bread, even people with very limited palates. Even the kids who "only" eat chicken nuggets will often eat rice or noodles or bread.

I wouldn't dream of serving dinner for a wide range of people without at least one of those options unless I knew my most likely reluctant eaters were also low-carb.

[melannen]

I didn't say it was *difficult*! I just said it wasn't rare.

It's super easy to have plain rice, plain noodles, plain mashed potatoes, white bread or rolls - but I have been to a ton of shared meals where all the sides were heavily seasoned and all the bread was dense and multigrain, and the cooks thought nothing of it.