French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Billon (classic english novels txt) 📕

parenting lingo went straight over her head, but it worked nonetheless. After being deprived of dessert once (with the resulting storm of tears, stamping of feet, and full-scale meltdown tantrum), she adjusted quickly to the new rule, which worked like a charm. At the same time, we encouraged her to say positive things at the table. “What do you like about this meal?” I’d ask her; to my initial surprise (and even hers), she usually did have nice things to say. Everyone felt happier as a result—even Sophie.

The “variety” phase of The Plan had now stretched into a second month. But I had now learned enough to be patient. Plus, Philippe and I found an unexpected pleasure in sitting down and eating the soups with the girls. We had planned to make a point of tasting everything for their benefit. But we actually found that we ended up enjoying the new tastes too. And the requirement that the vegetables reappear in “adult” form in menus later in the week pushed me to be more creative than I’d ever been about cooking.

Dinnertime now took a little longer—in part because it did sometimes take more time to cajole the girls into trying the new things. But we were also having more fun at the table. We invented a few new rituals around the theme of “tell me about your day”: the best thing, the worst thing, a funny thing, something I learned, something I did to help someone else. Claire would make us all laugh by taking a bite of food and saying, “Look, my hair grew!” (As she was self-conscious about still being nearly bald, I told her that the only way to grow the full head of hair sported by her older sister was to eat vegetables with lots of “vida-meens,” as she called them.)

We also told more stories around the table. Sophie’s personal favorite was an anecdote about when she was young. From about the age of two onward, she decided that she didn’t like anything pale and cold. This included cheese, yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, whipped cream, and even ice cream. Even at birthday parties, she’d turn up her nose at dessert if she thought it might contain one of these ingredients. By now, she’d learned to like ice cream. But she would still react violently if cheese—even something as mild as Cheddar—appeared on the table. To make the point about how silly this was, we’d use the ice cream anecdote whenever Sophie was being difficult at the table.

“Remember how you didn’t like ice cream?” we’d ask her. This would usually result in a drawn-out, reluctant, “Yeeeaaah…”

“Well, this is just like ice cream. Before, you didn’t like ice cream, and now you do. You just haven’t tasted [insert name of new thing] enough times to like it yet.” That usually got a smile, and hence an open mouth, into which a bit of food would be quickly popped. Eventually, this usually led to a grudging (and sometimes enthusiastic) acceptance of whatever new food was on offer. Sophie still vehemently refused to eat cheese, but we were making progress.

My in-laws, after an initially enthusiastic bout of advice, had said nothing for several weeks. I took this as a sign of approval.

“Isn’t it great that the girls are eating so many new things?” I said to Janine one day in the line at the market. I couldn’t contain my pride any longer.

I knew when she started her sentence with “Oui, mais…” (Yes, but…) that I wasn’t going to get the answer I was hoping for. “Children should eat what adults eat,” she gently chided me. “You’re spending a lot of time catering special meals. It would be much simpler if they ate what you ate, when you ate, and as you ate, right from the start.”

Hurt, I didn’t have much to say. It was true that compared to the French children we knew, our daughters were still fussy, picky eaters. But I was so proud of the progress we’d made. I felt as if we weren’t getting enough recognition for how much the kids had improved.

Once again, my husband smoothed things over. “The kids are just at the first phase,” he said mildly. “Learning different tastes is like learning the alphabet. When they’ve learned this, they’ll be able to go on and learn to like French dishes, just like learning to read.”

This led to endless alphabet games at the table. “A is for apple, B is for beets” was my favorite. In response, our grinning children would chant: “And C is for chocolate!” This seemed to sum up the French approach: food was serious fun.

It took me a couple of days (okay, a couple of weeks) to get over my mother-in-law’s comments. But I realized my husband was right. It was time to launch the second phase of The Plan. Now that they’d learned to eat a variety of foods, we could begin seriously applying the rest of the French Food Rules. This would be the true test of whether my kids could eat like the French.

7

Four Square Meals a Day

Why French Kids Don’t Snack

J’ai faim!

Mange ton poing,

Et garde l’autre pour demain.

Et si tu n’en a pas assez,

Mange un de tes pieds

Et garde l’autre pour danser!

I’m hungry!

Then eat your fist.

If you’re still hungry, you can eat your wrist.

Then if you still want to eat,

You can nibble one of your feet

And keep the other for tomorrow’s treat!

—Traditional French nursery rhyme

By early March, we had reached a turning point. We had met my New Year’s resolution goal: the girls were eating ten new things: spinach, beet salad, ratatouille (thanks to our friend Laurence in Provence), salad with vinaigrette (thanks to Sandrine), vichyssoise (potato-leek soup), red peppers (even raw), broccoli (a real victory), tomatoes (ditto), tapenade (mostly Claire, who had developed a fiendish love of olives), and quiche (with a liberal dose of ratatouille