[Sca-cooks] Children and food acceptance

[Suey]

David Friedman wrote:
> ...
>
> We ended up with children some of whose standard favorites were 13th 
> century Islamic, but who were still very conservative with regard to 
> anything unfamiliar to them. Our daughter, at 19, is getting more 
> adventurous, but her brother, 16, is still very reluctant to eat at 
> any ethnic restaurant that isn't Chinese, Japanese, Italian, or 
> Persian, and not all that enthusiastic about restaurants in those 
> categories other than the ones he is used to.
>   
My daughter was a bitch! Her first words were not 'Mama' or 'Papa' but 
'nanas no', i.e. no more bananas! How ungrateful can a kid get! She 
started nursery at age 2 cause I think she hated me. I carried her 
everywhere I went which was to the grocery, to the market and back to 
the grocery and to the market. So she hated food. She goes off on these 
narrations about how Mom got on exotic food kicks so we all had to eat 
13th Century Al-Andalus recipes and then came Nola and if it was not 
Nola it was Sent Sovi. When she was 4 her very best friend to this day 
joined her class. Melanie is her name and she still is Melody to my 
ears! She loves anything put but on her plate! She is 30 now so I put 
margaritas on her plate and she is one happy kid!!!

My husband told me, you can only influence children for so long. After 
that you loose control and you can only hope his peers will be good 
friends. Melanie is my very special goddaughter. Her Mom was my very 
special friend but she died so now I am Melanie's special godmom.

My son, who is two years younger, loved any food presented to him. He 
loved his first birthday cake. We have a monumental photo of him pouring 
his plate over his head. I kept a shower curtain under his high chair 
and his portable bathtub filled with warm water beside it for when he 
was done eating, inside and out. When a bit older, he invited classmates 
home for the week-end. When it came time for Sat lunch, the main meal of 
the day, I asked my husband what I could serve for it was Lent and his 
guests included a Catholic, a Muslim, a Jew and a Hindu. We went to the 
pizza parlor.
Suey