As a child, I was an extremely picky eater. Let’s face it, even as an adult, I’m still picky, albeit to a lesser degree. However, today I want to discuss something different—my children are picky eaters too, and I’ve had to come to terms with that.
What’s peculiar is how they’re picky. My pickiness revolved around eating very plain things repeatedly. My kids, however, will eat something regularly, then suddenly get bored with it and refuse to eat it, only to possibly want it again later. This issue is more pronounced with one child than the other, but both share this tendency. There was a time when my children didn’t want to go to McDonald’s because, as they put it, “we’re bored with it.”
I cannot relate to being bored with fast food as a kid. I vividly recall in university, my friend Sean would drop by and ask, “I’m going to the mall, do you want to go to McDonald’s?” Even if I had just eaten or was eating at that moment, my answer was always, “Yes, let me get my coat.” Based on that, I can’t quite understand children who say, “I don’t want McDonald’s.”
It’s not just McDonald’s. There was KFC, Burger King, and even Nando’s had its phase. I’d prefer if they just wanted to eat chicken nuggets all the time, but they get bored of those too—except at certain restaurants. Which ones? It seems to change day by day. Keeping up with their ever-changing preferences is challenging. I’m sure my mom is delighted I’m getting a taste of my own medicine, but still, I’d like to know if other parents have this problem of children getting bored with fast food instead of constantly craving it.
Another example is pizza. Our kids stopped liking the really good pizza from our local place and insisted on going back to Pizza Hut. Ironically, we started going to the local place, Fire Away, because they grew tired of Domino’s. These are just a few examples.
If we offer pizza more than once a week, our kids will complain. It’s rare that we do, but it sometimes happens, especially on holiday. This is baffling to me and M because both of us would be perfectly happy eating pizza two or three times a day. While I haven’t done that in ages, it’s certainly possible, and I wouldn’t get bored with it. So, when my kids refuse to have it twice in one week, I find myself scratching my head.
Look, I don’t think we’re bad parents. We don’t offer fast food every day, it’s more of a once-a-week treat. Some weeks, we don’t offer it at all because it’s so difficult to get them to agree on the same thing.