Have you noticed that people who are so convinced of their own parenting successes and others' parenting failures tend to have kids who, if you want them to do something, you just have to tell them to do it, and parenting simply becomes about telling your kid all the right things to do?
Hah. Borrow mine for a day.
lol - yup.
DD is especially picky as well so we've had lots of advice over the years. The most common is to just make her eat what ever it is. This was a kid that as a baby refused anything other than breast milk until 9 months old. At 9 months old she grabbed a cracker from DH and started eating those but wouldn't try/eat anything else for a few more months. I'm not just talking healthy stuff - she wouldn't try cookies, cake, ice cream - nothing. At ~16 months a daycare worker photocopied her text book on picky eaters and slipped it into the bag. Ummm thanks but we've tried all of that.
My usual response to the really pushy ones that have all of the answers and think that we just need to force her is to tell them about the time we did. After over an hour of drama DD finally put the microscopicly small piece of chicken in her mouth (we're talking teeny, teeny, teeny tiny) and them promptly barfed all over the dinner table. Yup. Good times.
The biggest thing both of my kids have taught me is that I now really, really make an effort to not judge people. No one has a clue how to deal with my kids (including me sometimes haha) and I most likely don't have a clue how to deal with theirs. I once saw a bit from comedian Louis C.K. that went something like this - before I had kids I used to look at people in the grocery store and think "look at that crazy parent, that poor kid", now I look and think "that poor parent, what has the child done to make them so crazy" (I'm sure it was worded better so apologies for any butchering but you get the idea).
