Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Introducing my DS to things--it has to be his idea

Ok, question. DS, 5, is largely accepting of things we enjoy casually but don't really force on him. We like baseball, he likes baseball. We like Doctor Who, he likes Doctor Who. Etc. DH fires up Stop Making Sense to test a newly installed sound system on our TV, DS promptly becomes a Talking Heads fan.

But often, we have trouble with introducing him to new ideas. For example, getting him to read a new book. Saying 'Here's a new book, would you like to read it?' will almost always get a no. Hide the book in a pile of known and liked books and wait for him to find it? He'll pull it out and read it within hours of us hiding it. Sometimes minutes.

Other times, we take him to new places we think he might like, such as museums or play places. While there, he acts like he isn't enjoying himself--complaining, refusing to do or see things, etc., and then tells us as we're leaving, 'I want to come back in two months.'

Does anyone else experience things like this with their kids? If so, what other techniques work when introducing new ideas to your kids beyond what we do with our DS--signposting them, then making him interact with them (always a struggle on some level, often exhausting for us) or planting them in his environment and waiting for him to discover them (more effective, but not 100 percent, and only works for certain types of things)?

Bonus points if you have any ideas about how to get him to try new foods...

I have one for new foods. Gardening and/or garden markets. Our younger DS wouldn't touch a vegetable until his preschool started growing some in a new garden they established. It expanded his list considerably, including into chives (and then scallions) and raw broccoli, of all things.

Similar to ConnectingDots suggestion, sometimes you can get them to try things by getting them to help you cook. It definitely doesn't work all the time, though.

Ah, I have tried getting him to help me cook. He's enjoyed it every time. Unfortunately he only accepts the finished dish if it's already a meal he will eat. If there are unfamiliar/undesired things in it, helping cook it holds no truck with him when he sits down to eat it.

We don't have room for a garden at our home (apartment in a city with three windows total, all of which face an alley, so...), but I, my DH, and my MIL have all invited him to choose the individual vegetables we buy when we go to the grocery store/farmstand. Sometimes he even tries to eat them in the store! But when it comes time to actually sit down and eat them in a meal at home? Again, no dice. I'm going to keep doing this, but is a bit maddening. This is the sort of thing I mean when I say I spend a lot of my energy trying to outwit him.

To be clear--DS has been a neophobe around food pretty much from the instant we tried transitioning him from baby food to actual food. It's the main reason he merited EI services way back when. But I'm always casting around to see if there's something I might have missed that I could try. This kid, man. If there was an Olympic Stubbornness team, he could be stubborn for his country.

Yup. Sounds like DS17. And as an older teen this behavior is back BIG time. At this age he ones of those teens who think parents don't know anything. Except of course when he wants our advice. I went shopping with him Saturday & it was a practice in keeping my mouth shut until he asked for help. I'm struggling with trying to get him to look at universities outside a very narrow scope, and think I have at least gotten him to look online at a few more. (We went on a college tour over spring break that was a success.)

I've tried to do is pick my battles carefully. Only pushing the issue when I really think he will like something or something I think is really critical. I've done the hiding books in his room, or just leaving something out where he stumbled upon it. I've also let other adults suggest things rather than me when it's possible because he take the advice of other adults more than me sometimes. (Band instructor, school math teacher, etc.)

DS wasn't a particularly picky eater as a kid, but not hugely adventurous either. But at 13 when he started eating like he had a hollow leg he suddenly became more adventurous. He now eats the many of the spicy ethnic foods I like & loves trying new food. But most of that came not from me but going out with friends, food he was exposed to at camp, or when he has gone on school trips.

Yup, two insane eaters, and one indescribably resistant to *all* suggestion. Yes, it's exhausting. She's 9 now, and it's better in many ways, but the basic characteristic is deeply, deeply rooted. Any visible attempt to get her to go direction A will result in immediate resistance to the death - regardless of whether she actually wants A. In school, we have learned that it's critical she has a teacher well versed in the art of subtly nudging DD in the right direction from behind, without DD realizing what's up. One truly fabulous teacher was a bust for DD, as the teacher was simply too direct in telling DD what she needed to do, so DD would dig in her heels on principle, every time. sigh.

So I've always done a lot of the kinds of things you describe. I still don't tell her to go to the bathroom before a long drive, I just announce that I'm going (and that I will get there first - which launches a race to beat me there whilst I try to capture squealing evading child). I announce what I am doing a lot, without an invite, and often she then wants to jump in. She, too, loves to cook and never, ever touches the resulting food. She'll plan and produce whole meals for us, and never taste them. But if I put something on my plate and don't offer it at all, every now and then she'll actually ask for a taste. It's maddening and time-consuming to be constantly trying to lure and nudge someone like this. But a whole lot faster and easier than trying to drag her there by force!

So, I guess no magic answers here, sorry Skepchick. But I feel for you.

Grow-your-own veggies and helping to cook are great ideas. Here are a few more which may work sometimes:

- Have him help with grocery shopping and asking what he would like to choose to try this week, or what favorite he would like to have again. There can be natural variations in the flavors of foods, so it may take a few tastings until a person knows range of flavors to expect from a particular food.

- Arrange the foods on the plate in a smiley face, or triangle, or three circles like the outline of Mickey Mouse's head, or some other simple "artwork".

- When he tastes something, ask his opinion/experience of it, such as whether it reminds him of other foods. It can be very validating for a child to know they've been heard and understood, and that their viewpoint is valued.

- If he has a favorite food, help him try variations of that. Some kids love pizza, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese. Even among these foods there are many varieties of ingredients and differing levels of nutrition.

- Do not require that he finish a new food which he has tasted. Teach a variety of polite responses rather than "YUCK" (such as, "I don't prefer X", "I'm not fond of X", "It's an acquired taste").

- If kids learn what a food should look like, smell like, and taste like, they will know when a food is spoiled and not good to eat. Unfortunately nearly every carton of fresh berries has at least one bad berry; It is good for kids to see what indicates that a food should not be eaten. Other foods such as sour milk or rancid nuts have an odor. Helping kids learn the appropriate descriptions for sour milk, moldy berries, or any other food which may be encountered which is not fresh and should not be consumed, is to their benefit.

We've done a few things that have helped greatly with our boys, who are both extraordinarily stubborn as well (especially DS6):

- What about bringing him to the library to pick his own books and then telling him he's limited to 10?

- When we go somewhere that we know DS6 will resist and we're flexible enough, we tell him that he has to stay for at least 30 minutes and then he can decide if he wants to leave. He's not even allowed to talk to us about leaving until 30 minutes are up.

- Sometimes, what they're looking for is control over their own environment. What about giving him a choice of a new museum or a new playground to visit?

- DS6 will usually need advance warning and a warm up period. What about telling him a few days in advance that you'll be going and talking about some of the things you'll see there? Maybe even find some pictures of the place and read up on it?

- What about promising his favourite activity when you get home? We tell DS6 that if he's really good while we're out, we'll play Lego with him when we get home. We even sometimes promise to pick up a small souvenir at the museum or science centre or whatever.

As for food, here are some ideas:

- Establish a rule that they have to try at least one bite of all new foods. That's it. We don't even suggest a second bite.

- If they are enthusiastic and have a real bite or two, they can have a few M&Ms or a bowl of ice cream or whatever for dessert. DS6 now loves avocado as a result of this trick!

- These smart kids will often respond really well to the explanation as to why it's so important that they eat lots of different foods - all the vitamins and minerals our bodies need, and all that.

- Books about picky eaters - Tales for Very Picky Eaters, The Picky Little Witch, Green Eggs and Ham, I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato, and How Martha Saved her Parents From Green Beans are some of our favourites. Of course, then you have to plant the books...

Wow, listing all of that and having used other techniques again, it really makes me realize how much work it has been at times!

Ok, good ideas here. I should try to leverage teachers and therapists a bit more than I do. I try to be very selective and sparing with that; maybe I should work that angle a bit more.

If there are no magic answers, so be it. I'll just brace myself and carry on. It's also a bit heartening to hear that my kid isn't the only one who does stuff like this, and it is as exhausting as it seems.

Individual answers (sorry for the epic length, hope I'm hitting it all):

Early on (two years of age), we instituted the 'at least one bite of everything on your plate' rule and did leave things alone if he took a good-faith bite of a new food (as opposed to nibbling the tiniest possible micro-molecule etc). We continue with this. Even still, getting him to take that bite is often a 30- to 45-minute struggle. Seriously.

I tried artful arrangements of food a few years back, when he was around two--I got an alpha-numeric set of cake-decorator's tools to cut letters and numbers out of cold cuts and cheese slices. He would admire the letters, gleefully read the words I spelled with them, read off the cheese numbers, sometimes even rearrange them...but he would not eat them. At that point I abandoned the technique (cleaning those tiny metal molds was a complete PITA) but you raise a good point--maybe I'll have more success with the concept now that he is older.

As for dessert--we have instituted two sure things: a home-baked cookie on Wednesday (and he helps me bake them now, and he decorates them too) and his choice of dessert on Sunday. He gets these two weekly treats no matter how he behaved during the day, and no matter how well or poorly he eats. The notion here is to show him we keep our word and we carry through, whether it's about something he likes or something he doesn't. We want to be careful using food as rewards because my husband and are both very overweight. We use them, but we only give one food reward for every four non-food rewards (toys, Harry Potter chapters, supervised Wikipedia searches, etc) and are desperately looking to expand the non-food-reward options.

Also? This kid does not recognize the transitive property of food. For a long time, he would eat goldfish crackers, and he would eat pretzels, but he refused to eat pretzel goldfish crackers. I wish I was joking, but I am not. So, each iteration of a food is essentially a new food to him. For example, he now eats grilled cheese sandwiches (and boy it was work getting him to accept those), but last week he refused a grilled cheese sandwich he ordered at a restaurant because it had visible grill marks on it. (The ones he eats at home have no grill marks.) Only after a lot of coaxing did he deign to eat a quarter of it. The situation is utterly crazy-making at times.

If I ask DS what he thinks of a new food just after he tries it, he will, without fail, tell me he doesn't like it, even if it is clear by the look on his face that he likes it and just doesn't want to admit it. We deal with this by sticking to the 'try one bite of everything on your plate' rule, even for things he's tried and disliked before. (Research shows that kids need to try a food at least 15 times before they decide they like it.)

Sometimes we do give him choices of places to go, but it doesn't always work. If given a choice between a place he knows and one he doesn't, he picks the one he knows. If given a choice between two places he doesn't know, he will refuse both. We get around this by saying he's going to go to New Place on X date and signposting it and foreshadowing for a week ahead of time. (We will sometimes ask his ASD therapist to write what's called a Social Story, which is just that--a story that tells what will happen on the day.) That prep usually kills any initial refusal but he'll sometimes refuse to go on the day and we have to deal with that tantrum and get him over and past that. (sigh)

We have explained (always when we are calm) that it is important to eat a range of foods so he can grow up healthy and strong. He essentially agrees and understands but this evaporates when he's faced with his longtime enemy, string cheese, or the dreaded tofu snacks.

As for books! Will look into those titles, thank you. DS loves Green Eggs and Ham and has for ages, but its message has not sunk in. DS likes its wordplay far more than its ending. Even still--Mo Willems has the new world-beater on this topic: I Really Like Slop! DS LOVES LOVES LOVES it. We got it about a month ago. I hope its message will sink in... no luck yet.

And yeah, during all of this, we are working with him on politely expressing displeasure with food. In the last six months he became a rampant 'yuck'-er and 'ewww'-er. (Sigh again)

Ah! We have won the bathroom war, at least. Racing him there always works. (Whew!) So does telling him we won't leave the house until he's used it. He HAS internalized our belief that being late is not allowed. He's closing in on 450 days in a row getting out the door on time to go to school. Yay!

I wonder what would happen if you stopped asking/making him try new foods? Maybe there's something about having control that is the attractive part for him. Just a random thought.

Is he in school yet? We did find that our picky eaters (and both have been, although the younger one is far more so) improved in willingness to try new things after they saw children their own ages eating or doing those things.