It is common for parents to have a hard time getting their children to eat vegetables, but often they have an easier time getting them to eat fruits. This problem has led to numerous food bloggers, parenting bloggers, health food and parenting magazines, and even celebrity cookbook authors to come up with creative ways to either hide the veggies in their children’s meals, or make them look like cartoon characters, what have you.
What if you are a parent with the reverse of this problem?
Take me, for example. My four year old daughter will eat most healthy foods and even some vegetables with no problem. Fruit, however, literally makes her gag. It wasn’t always this way. When she ate baby food she had no problem eating pureed fruits along with vegetables, but once she was out of the baby food stage and we tried giving her bits of different fruits, it was over. She was fine eating apple sauce, yogurt with pureed fruit in it, fruit juices, etc. but actual whole fruit for some reason freaks her out.
Today we had a strawberry picking field trip with my daughter's preschool. I was hoping that this would be a great opportunity to help get her excited about eating strawberries since she would be the one picking them out and watching her friends eat them. She did a great job finding ripe berries that were bug-free and not smushed, and after looking around at a hayride full of preschoolers with berry-stained faces making yummy noises, she agreed to try one. She held it at arm’s length, made a face that was a combination of fear and disgust, and reluctantly brought it to her mouth. After literally five minutes of chewing and swallowing the berry, making the face the whole time, she proclaimed that she liked it. I made a big deal and gushed over how proud I was of her for trying the strawberry, and asked her if she’d like another one. She replied “no fanks, maybe tomorrow.”
Super. So now I have two containers of fresh, organic berries.
My other daughter likes berries, but strawberries are very fragile and delicate and do not keep for too long in the refrigerator. There is no way all of them will get eaten by the berry-eating members of our family before they go bad.
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