What do your weekly meals look like for you and your fam? I generally enjoy cooking, what I don’t enjoy is the negotiations that come with cooking, and with kids, it’s even worse. I’m also the kind of person that could eat the same 5 dishes for a year without much fuss or question. That’s the ADHD lodged in my brain for you.
The negotiation, or even the anticipation of negotiations, makes me agitated. If I could, I’d be a food dictator, but that’s not how living with people works. It’s annoying enough to me that I often push it to the back of my mind and just “figure it out” on the fly. That’s not conducive to making good choices, though, only convenient choices.
If I’m going to do most of the cooking, I’ll want a schedule of meals, so I can both plan, anticipate, and head-off any objections. I struggle with being assertive on this point, and I’m told often, “We don’t need to do that much planning.” Which, as someone with ADHD into my late 30s, I know is not true, and I do need that much planning if not more. Structure is something I need, and the kids at this age obviously thrive off structure as well.
So anyway, how do you tackle this? I need to get this sorted out for myself, but also for my kiddos. Kiddo 1 just had an annual checkup and is low on iron, and is growing increasingly picky about food. Kiddo 2 is still in that “I’ll try anything in front of me.” phase, and getting this sorted out now hopefully means I can avoid the pickiness down the line.
I’m going to cross post this in !neurodiverse@hexbear.net & !food@hexbear.net as I think it has some clear overlap.
One suggestion, maybe plan easy/low-effort meals so that, in the event that the kid decides they’re picky today, you aren’t so emotionally invested in whether they eat it or not. For us that’s a lot of roasted vegetables, rice dishes, and things you can dip in tzatziki (since tzatziki is our panacea for getting the toddler to eat). Speaking from experience, I get a lot more upset when I’ve put a ton of work into something that the kid subsequently throws on the ground or ignores (we’re in early toddlerhood, still learning good table behavior) than if it was just a quick thing I whipped up. At the moment this does mean we are leaning into more snack-y meals instead of ‘proper’ courses, but it saves a lot of stress.
You can’t really control what they will want to eat, but you can set yourself up to handle it better and to think more clearly about the options you have to manage the situation as it develops.