My Family and Other Globalizers | Travails of the picky eater

Your child is her own person. And some people have imaginative minds, while others, imaginative palettes. (Representational image: Harry Grout via Unsplash)

Note to readers: My Family and Other Globalizers is a weekly parenting column on bringing up global citizens.

When my older son, Ishaan, was started on solids, it was a joy. He scarfed down everything put in front of him. New flavours delighted him; new textures were intriguing. He took olives and feta cubes as a snack to his kindergarten and returned home to lunches of salmon and tortillas. He drank milk by the buckets and still had space for daal and roti.

I congratulated myself at my wonderful parenting. I’d read up on the importance of providing one’s child with a wide range of healthy food options. And Ishaan had me convinced that there was no such thing as a picky eater, only misguided parents who bribe their offspring with sugary treats and model suboptimal eating habits themselves.

And then, two and half years later, Nico was born. There were early indications that this child had strong feelings about what went into his mouth. I was due to return to work as the Europe correspondent of a leading Indian newspaper when he was about six months old. But my plans ran into an unexpected obstacle. Nico absolutely refused to make the switch from my nipple to that of a bottle’s.

Here I was, primed for my return to the trenches of the world of news, and my baby refused to eat. I felt felled by friendly fire. I’d cast around desperately for advice on Facebook and was flooded with sympathetic responses from friends who’d faced a similar crisis.

A cousin tried to “comfort” me with the information that by the time her child was 15 months old, he’d eventually taken a bottle. An aunt claimed it would help if I faced the baby away from me when offering formula. Others recommended I have my spouse give the bottle. I was advised to stay out of the room while a feed was attempted. I was counselled to stay out of the house all together.

A horrible week followed during which I spent a few hours a day cowering at the media centre at the European Union headquarters, unable to focus on the press conferences swirling around me, convinced that I was the cruellest mother alive. I was starving my child by denying him the breast, so that I could work. I was ergo, at the very top of the taxonomy of evil: a mother who put her own needs ahead of her baby’s.

But just as I was about to give up and accept life as Nico’s permanent feeding machine, he relented. One afternoon, as I listlessly tapped away at the keyboard of my laptop in the EU press room, I received an excited phone call from our nanny. Nico had finally guzzled a bottle down and promptly fallen asleep.

And just like that, all was well again. Well, for a few months. Nico is now 11 years old and the list of foods he doesn’t eat remains about the length of the Ganga.

For the first few years of his life, he subsisted purely on fruit, nuts, rice and yoghurt. My mother comforted me by telling me he had very “satvik” dietary preferences. Obviously, some recessive Tam Brahm gene had awoken in him, that had passed by the rest of the family entirely.

I spent hours patiently waiting for him to eat the food placed in front of him, doing the famous aeroplane spoon manoeuvre, only to be met by closed lips.

When the child is hungry, she will eat, all the books told me. But my son could just keep going, skipping meal after meal until I broke down and took away the broccoli and fish, and gave him his beloved raisins and rice. Over the years, I tried ignoring him, offering food but not forcing him to eat, stuffing spoons in his mouth, yelling, making animal-shaped carrot snacks, emotional blackmail – one more spoon for, Mama - etc., etc.

So, how did it all turn out?

At 11, Nico is entirely idiosyncratic when it comes to diet. His list of favourite foods includes breakfast cereal, bread, rice, pasta, most fruit, cucumber sushi rolls and fish roe sushi, chicken curry, daal, clams, boiled eggs, raw carrots and nutella. His most hated foods include steak, cold cuts, most seafood, mushrooms, cooked carrots, papaya, peaches, and scrambled eggs.

He is finickity and capricious, but he’s alive. Not only that, but he is also somehow, a heathy and energetic youngster, who happens to have a far bigger appetite for knowledge than food.

As for me, I’ve failed spectacularly at my book-learned healthy-eating habits plan. And in doing so have realized yet again, how parenting is over-rated. Your child is her own person. And some people have imaginative minds, while others, imaginative palettes. It’s more important to enjoy your children for who they are, than for what they do, or do not, eat.