In defense of pampering a picky eater

There's been some press lately about how parents shouldn't give into picky eaters. A recent Newsweek article, Help Kids Overcome Picky Eating commands: 

"Don’t fix separate meals. It’s hard to resist when kids are refusing to eat. But it only reinforces their biases."

The article helpfully suggests such strategies as pureeing cauliflower to look like mashed potatoes and concealing as many as eight puréed vegetables along with wheat germ "in a tasty meatball."

Well, that's great, but Picky Eater (usually referred to in this blog as "PE") won't eat mashed potatoes or meatballs. She'll only eat potatoes when they are french fried, on one of our occasional fast food forays. She will eat ground beef only as hamburgers.

For the last couple of nights, I have tried to make meals that would nudge PE towards eating what the rest of us like. The first night I made what I told her was "noodle pizza"--penne noodles squished into the bottom of a casserole dish, topped with pizza sauce and lots of mozzarella cheese.  (I made a separate pan for me, topped with goat cheese and artichoke hearts). PE tore into enthusiastically for the first couple of bites and then began to pick at it, saying she wasn't really hungry.

Last night I made Satay Chicken Stir-Fry with Snow Peas and Cilantro (from RealSimple.com), substituting the snow peas and broccoli with tiny slices of green onions and celery.  When PE asked what the green stuff was I told her "chives" ("chives" is my code name for anything small and green since she likes fresh chives from the garden, for some reason). I served it with sushi rice, which PE only seems to like when we go to Asian restaurants (there not being anything else she will eat there). 

The peanut butter sauce was a little sweet for my taste, so I couldn't see how she wouldn't like it since pb and sugar are her two favorite flavors. But she pushed at it with a worried look on her face and only ate the tiny serving I gave her when I said she absolutely had to finish it if she wanted milk.  (Demanding that kids eat is something the Newsweek article says is a no-no, but I was getting a little desperate). I think she would have drunk the milk and eaten nothing if I had given it to her with her meal.

We are listening to the "Little House" books on tape in the car right now. I was hoping that hearing about the Ingalls family's limited diet would make PE grateful for the abundance of food we have now. But if the Ingalls had had to dine on chicken nuggets and french fries every night, I'm not sure that PE wouldn't have wanted to join them.  That the child is as healthy and energetic as she is, fortunately or unfortunately, attests to the fact that maybe such things aren't so horrible, at least for the few years that she insists on eating them. At least I hope it's a few years...