On Picky Eaters

I saw a blog post yesterday about how parents should feel lucky if they have picky eaters.  It summarized the advantages of having a non-eater as this:  1) enjoy the meals you don't have to make; 2)  Enjoy your sparkling kitchen / dishes that don't need to be washed; 3) Enjoy not hearing your children whine that they are hungry.  I won't link to the site because I'm not trying to pick a fight with this particular blogger, but rather to comment on some common misconceptions about exceptionally picky eaters and what it's *really* like to have one.

• "Enjoy the meals you don't have to make" - picky eaters still eat, so you still have to prepare food for them. Whether it's a Pediasure meal to go through a G-tube, a finely chopped piece of fruit because they can't take bites of whole fruit, or Teddy Grahams (the only brand of crackers they will eat so forget about trying to sneak in a Triscuit) that don't touch the peanut butter (because you want them to learn to eat some protein but they won't eat any of it if it's touching anything else), you're still preparing meals / snacks.  In fact, you are probably preparing more because 1) you are so desperate to get calories in them that you are offering them snacks throughout the day, and 2) you eat with them as often as you can in order to model eating, but they won't eat the food that you prepare for yourself, so you are preparing at least two sets of food for every meal.
• "Dishes that don't need washing / sparkling kitchen" - again, they still eat.  And they dump LOTS of the things that they don't want on the floor.  And there are the dishes not just from the oral foods, but also from the G-tube.  Remember the days of washing and sterilizing bottles several times a day?  It's like that.  
• "small person whining 'I'm hungrry!'" - picky eaters still whine, but they whine about not wanting to try new food and not wanting to sit at the table for dinner.  And since they don't typically whine about being hungry, you have to keep them on a pretty set feeding schedule and make sure they're getting calories throughout the day, because they won't remind you.  
• If you have a picky eater, your mommy fail can never be letting the kids eat at McDonalds, because it won't work. You can never leave the house without proper food for your kid because there is no drive-thru that dishes up food that they will eat.  
• Having a picky eater is way, WAY more than a kid who won't eat broccoli.  It's having a kid who won't eat any of the things that adults so cleverly hide vegetables in (such as pasta, pancakes /breads / muffins, soups, and smoothies), and having that be the much bigger problem than the vegetable problem.  
• Helping a picky eater is a time intensive endeavor.  It involves seeing an occupational therapist every week, a pediatrician several times per year just for weight checks, and a GI and nutritionist and rehab doctor to come up with plans for how to work on the eating.  Sometimes it involves writing down every single thing they put in their mouth so that you can track calories.  It means being on close terms with a home health care provider and your  health insurance company, because they provide you the tools to get your child the supplemental nutrition that he won't eat by mouth.  
• Helping a picky eater is emotional.  You wonder whether you are doing the right things as a parent all the time.  You wonder if you should push harder or back off; whether you should get them more therapy or less; whether your efforts are helping them or hurting them, and whether they will ever have a normal relationship with food.  You sometimes feel like you have failed at the most basic task in parenting young children.  

That's my list. I'm sure others could add to it, based on their observations.  And I'm sure that I don't get some of the difficult things about having a good eater.  Zoey is showing very promising signs of being one of those mythical creatures (the "good eater"), so maybe in a year I"ll get to write a post about that.  Until then, these are my thoughts.