SC - Childhood Preferences (long)

[Jeff Gedney]

> I preferred a very bland and simple menu.  
Me too.
In my case, as a child, I had badly misaligned teeth, and texture was
much more of a concern to me than was taste. 
Hence I much preferred the softness of hamburgers to the mix 
of textures in a good steak.
Even though I have had my teeth straightened, and I have educated 
myself, I still flinch at biting down on a bit of gristle ( used to make me 
*gag*) or even the very tasty strip of fat on a Steak I actually have to 
_force_ myself to continue chewing and swallow. It is very difficult to 
do for me.
(Another problem is that I have a distince fear of cooked fish. I think 
I may have had a problem with a bone when I was very young, I rember 
vividly something getting stuck in the roof of my mouth, though I 
cannot date the memory. Anyway, I still break out in a cold sweat at a 
cooked fish (like poached scrod), but I love Sushi. I also cant stand 
to eat any food that looks back at me from the table, like whold fish or 
lobster. Kind of makes living in New England rather difficult.)

However, as a I child would not eat spinach. My only reason is that it 
had to taste awful, because PopEye's nephews made such extravagant 
faces at it. As a Kid, stuff like this makes quite an impression.
When I finally was forced to eat it, I discovered that I loved it!

>From my observations of my own children I would opine that little kids 
often have very clear "rules", which may not seem logical to grownups, 
but make sense to a kid. Things like, "if a TV character does not like 
vegetables, There MUST be a good reason, so I _MUST_ not like them 
either"
The result is that, sometimes, something that they could not wait to 
get their hands on at four (steamed brussle sprouts with a little 
balsamico), I could not get them to choke down at six if their LIFE 
depended on it.

Once I found out why they made up the "rule" I was able to explain to 
them why the rule should not apply, but until that time, I could not change
the terms of my son's world. I have seen this kind of absolutism in small 
children time and time again. 

I have seen my son so absolutely convinced that something was "bad" 
that he could make himself physically sick, even if only the week before 
he was able to eat it and like it. 

Often I try getting him to eat a new thing.
Some of the times I serve it without telling him what it is, and every now 
and then he loved it. Then when I told him what he was eating it suddenly 
became Gross and Disgusting, and he thought it was awful to the point of 
making him too physically sick to continue. 
His internal "rules" were more important then the evidence of his own 
senses!!

I guess the point of this is that there are frequently reasons that kids 
won't eat something, and even if it makes no sense to YOU, it makes 
perfect sense to the kids.  You have to get at that reason and substitute
another reason.

Brandu
( who just got his eldest to eat Sushi last month, after finding out that
he connected raw fish with rotten fish, and despite the fact that the 
sushi was obviously not rotten, he "KNEW" it would taste "foul and 
yucky"! 
I was able to address that and the objection melted away. 
Guess what? Now he loves to "gross out" his friends by telling them about 
eating raw fish!)