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...
