The Food Arc

Later today I will go to a birthday party for a child turning one. And although this child will have no idea what is happening, and no ongoing recollection of the day’s events, we will all coo and cheer as if our lives depended on it.

I was talking with James (the dad) about his almost one-year old last week. The topic immediately shifted to food, since it is impossible to discuss a child in the infant/toddler stage without mentioning what goes in, what comes out, and how much or how little sleep one is getting. Parents, especially in that first year, are reduced from the interesting, dynamic people they once were, to zombies that obsessively monitor another person’s most intimate bodily functions.

I digress.

I casually mentioned my “Food Arc” theory to James. I told him that in my experience of raising 5 wildly different kids- keeping most other factors fairly constant (same house, same two parents, same food budget, etc.)- I’ve noticed an arc of sorts as it pertains to their eating. Poor James, in his sleep deprived state, zoned out halfway through Phase Two and asked if I could please just write it all down.

Phase One of the Food Arc goes something like this: from about birth to 18 months, a child will eat nearly anything that’s offered. With my first child, I recall my elation that his three favorite foods at his one year check-up were: wild-caught salmon, avocados, and blueberries. I thought all the books I read, all the late night worrying, and all the research accumulated on the epidemic of childhood obesity had really paid off. I thought my work was done.

Strangely, around the 18-month mark my sweet angel began to regard everything placed on his highchair tray as suspect. He began to turn his head. He began to throw food at me, at the dog, at the wall. Once placid, he began to kick his legs, not wanting to be strapped into a high chair at all. One time, when my husband was working a 72-hour shift and I had gone through approximately 47 meals in this fashion, I handed him a cracker, locked myself in the bathroom and cried. I came back and found the cracker gone. Thus, began Phase Two.

His weight dropped and by his 2-year check-up, I was convinced child protective services was going to take him away. I remember plying him with bread and butter the night before his appointment. Two parts butter for every one part bread. He did not seem to mind.

Neither did the pediatrician. After checking him out she rolled her chair backwards, removed a sheet of paper from a file folder on her wall labeled ‘high caloric diet’, and handed it to me. This piece of paper suggested that I offer my child things like biscuits and gravy and ice cream. She looked at me sympathetically and said if I was really worried I could come back next month for a weight check. I asked her what I could do to make him eat healthy foods like he used to and she shrugged, “keep offering it.”

Which I did. For months and years, I kept stubbornly offering vegetables that went ignored or thrown against a wall. Through the years this refusal morphed into vegetables ignored, or hidden under other food, or tentatively bitten with just the tiniest front corner of the front tooth, then promptly spit out. He had a word he liked to use at dinner. “Tusting” was that word. As in short for “DIS-gusting”. As in, the food I lovingly prepared and served night after night.

So, like anyone subjected to cooking for toddlers, I began to doubt my reason for existence. I began to care less about what I offered, knowing it would be thrown out anyways. What began as organic roasted brussel sprouts with a balsamic glaze, became organic roasted brussel sprouts with a balsamic glaze for myself and my husband and a small handful of frozen mixed veggies quickly microwaved and tossed in butter for him. After he stopped even eating those, I would still put them on his plate, and knowing they would get tossed anyway, left them frozen. I’m not proud of it, I’m just here with the facts.

I am also not proud of the amount of food waste during those years, especially in the world in which we live: where many don’t have enough to eat while large percentages of crops go unharvested left to rot on the ground. So, if you throw a handful of frozen vegetables on a plate, night after night, you’re not going to see me judging you.

THAT SAID. I think the offering worked. Around the time my oldest was 7 or 8 something strange happened. He started getting hungry. He was involved in a couple different sports at the time and swimming during the summer months, and all of a sudden, came to the table ravenous. He ate what I gave him. This is Phase Three of the food arc- they come around; the arc levels off. This child, who once said that ketchup “spices my throat”, now hops up from the table to get the hot sauce. The siege has ended.

Now, I know every kid is different and Sharon from accounting can get her 3-year old to “just devour” quinoa and kale. Great for Sharon. I had two kids that would naturally eat just about anything, one who was down the middle and two ridiculously picky eaters. The Food Arc has affected them all. (One of whom, right this very minute, thinks she can get out of eating by calling herself a vegetarian even while she refuses vegetables. I kindly reminded her that I saw her eat bacon just last week to which she responded, “I’m a vegetarian who eats bacon.”)

So, if you’re in Phase Two, here’s some tips for survival: cut yourself some slack. Try to enjoy meal time, and not stress too much about what they’re eating or not eating. Remember what meals are for- not just the consumption of nutrients, but laughter, bonding, connection and joy. Keep making delicious food, even if only you and your partner eat it. Light a candle, speak a blessing. Make the family table a place of enjoyment and belonging, of tradition-making and place-holding. Don’t let fear, anger and control steal your joy. And keep offering- they’ll (hopefully) come around.