I realize that’s a totally random and odd question to ask. But, it’s one of my favorite unintuitive pieces of advice from Ellyn Satter.
In “How to Get Your Kid to Eat, But Not Too Much,” Ms. Satter writes that, in the interest of encouraging your kid to explore food at the dinner table, you should let them spit food out.
“Letting” them spit food out also includes not really reacting when they do it, or just letting it be a matter of fact action, as if they scratched their nose. So, yeah, as your toddler opens wide and lets a mouthful of carrot pour forward, a simple, “oh, you can spit that into your napkin” will do. (Otherwise, they may sense your earnestness to eat whatever food it is and queue the toddler food wars.)
Ms. Satter argues, convincingly, that it’s one thing to taste something and quite another to actually swallow it. Last night, Bean eyed a bowlful of roasted brussel sprouts (which she has never liked) and asked how to eat them? Do you peel this leaf off like this? I told her you just pop the whole thing in your mouth, like so. So she did. Chew chew. “I EAT BRUSSEL SPROUTS, DADDY!” Slight alarm. Deep shoulder shudders. Face of horror. “Bean, you can spit that out if you’d like.” And done.
If she didn’t always have the option of spitting food out, she might be more reluctant to taste food in the first place. And tasting food is the first step to actually eating it. Pamela Druckerman wrote in “Bringing Up Bebe” that a key way to encourage your child have a broad palette is to offer the same food repeatedly, under the theory that some foods are an acquired taste and children need multiple exposures before they like/tolerate them.
And as a little picky eater myself, I still remember how gross food could be and strongly identify with that look of toddler alarm.
For now, it’s something that we let Bean do. She’ll probably grow out of it by high school, right?
