Damn that’s smart!!
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Genius.
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Lol! I learned my lesson this year; I was the only parent to actually write each kid’s name on the card. They are 3. They can’t read. I just created more work for the teachers lol
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Mackenzie’s mum is a genius
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Put on an episode of Daniel tiger and gave my child a popsicle so I can read my book. Moms need vices! He is very enriched most of the time.
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Daniel Tiger is quality content! Excellent parenting to choose something made for young children. They say that makes a big difference.
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Made playdough from scratch with Pumpkin.
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An internet sales guy came to the door yesterday and while I was talking B1 climbed the chair to reach my ear and did a very 6 year old whisper asking if this was the kind of person I told him about never giving our information to.
Luckily the guy thought it was funny but I am proud of B1 even if the guy had been offended.
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So I read the book “first bite” and literally found something in the first chapter that has been working incredibly well.
Background; latte is a picky eater. Very neophobic of course.
After reading first chapter, I was driving her to school and had roughly the following conversation. Relevant, it was exactly on her 6.5 half birthday:
“Hey I was reading a book and learned something cool! So we’ve talked about how little kids are really nervous to try new foods, and that can be normal, but they grow out of it, usually by 6, yeah?”
“Yeah”
“Well what I didn’t know, is that kids have this sort of rebelliously inspired taste expansion around 7-8 years! It’s this like ‘ha look at me I bet this grown up thinks I won’t like curry with onions’ type attitude and they’re super drawn to trying tons of new foods. I was just thinking how cool it’ll be, as you move away from the neophobia of 6 and into the adventurousness of 7, to watch all the new foods you decide to try”
And then she sat there silently for like 2 minutes (silence is very unusual for her)
“Mom I want to try a new food. Can I try a new food today? What can I pick?”
“Oh well that’s a good question. The book talked about a challenge they use for people learning to like new foods, and I was considering doing it myself, want to hear about it?”
“Yeah!”
“Okay they call it ‘tiny tastes’ and the idea is you pick a fruit or vegetable that you don’t like, but not something you hate so much it’ll make you gag. Just something you’re really not sure about. And you taste a tiny cube of it every day for 14 days, and get a sticker every time you lick or eat it each day. And then by day 15, you like it!”
“What did you want to do it with?”
“Oh I was thinking I’d try mushrooms or beets”
“Can I do it with you? Let’s do mushrooms!”
What followed was 14 days of us tasting a slice or cube of shiitake mushroom every day, with HER even reminding ME most days at breakfast. And we ended with assembling and eating kebabs on Memorial Day. She also willingly and without prompting ate the onion and marinated chicken on there.
Since then, we started an “any new foods” chart where I write up every new thing she tastes. Guys. We got our CSA box and she ate:
Curly endive
Chives
Red Russian kale
Arugula (she did a full little bowl of arugula with oil and balsamic)
Tatsoi
Icicle radish
She’s also tried four new sauces. Up until now she’ll only sometimes eat 1 type of ranch. No ketchup, hummus, guak, any sort of dip or sauce.
We’ve never done sticker charts before but this arose organically. I will indeed be doing another specific tiny taste chart with her soon- need to get that rolling today. I can’t express how life changing it’ll be to get out of our extremely rigid food list. Maybe some day we’ll successfully eat at someone else’s home even 
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That’s fantastic!
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Oh my god I really hope this happens for ravioli!!! That’s an incredible win!!!
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This is amazing. I’m also mind blown that latte is six and a half though.
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That’s amazing! I can tell it took a lot of work on your part but the payoff could be huge, well done!
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It took a lot of work on the follow-through, but the whole concept literally just fell in my lap. Everything just lined up perfectly on the timing, and her current phase of development with a little bit of the hey fuck you/watch me attitude. 
it’s just funny because it’s the least thought out and educated way. I’ve jumped into trying to deal with her food stuff. I’ve scoured so many damn books and experts and everything else, and this book made a pretty good case for a certain amount of pushing in a non-punitive manner, way more so than a lot of of the modern techniques/experts do. But they have worked so so little for us. I was open to trying something new, and this kind of fell in my lap.
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That’s awesome and I’m totally going to try the food thing next year if Pipsqueak is still super picky.
We’ve tried a few sticker charts and they’ve worked great. For me the key thing is that they reward as positive behavior instead of the lack of an unwanted behavior. For example, we did one for doing silly dance in the way to the car (the more negative alternative being "you only earn a sticker if you don’t scream for 10 minutes before transitioning into the car).
We currently have one going for reading bob books. There’s no actual pressure to read but if she sits down to read a book then she gets a sticker! This is the first time we’ve done a “prize” with the sticker chart vs just the instrinsic reward of finishing the sticker chart and I think we will go back to no prize next time because it’s definitely changed how and why she approaches finishing it.
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The repeated tiny tastes idea sounds like it could work for us too. Thanks for sharing.
Fwiw, Spore’s food window seems to be re-opening a tiny bit (he’s almost 6). He regularly asks for cilantro, and has tried spinach, avocado, mint, and pickle recently. Cilantro was on some takeout tacos he loved, so it has good associations now.
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I am curious, with what you all are reading, when do they say picky eating typically tends to peak? (I know differently for every kid in practice)
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2-6 is peak neophobia.
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Hahahha that’s so many years (thank you)
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