Monday, January 30, 2012

"I HATE SALAD!"


 



Luke absolutely HATED salads for the longest time.
In fact, this was the one food that I didn't make him eat for a while because it just wasn't very important to me that my kids like salad, and it doesn't really seem like something kids usually eat.

This is kind of funny because people who know me know that I feed my kids lots of food that isn't typical kid-friendly food and my children are required to eat it, but for some reason, I didn't usually make them eat salad.  Maybe its actually because I often had 2 vegetables for dinner, so as long as they ate the other one I was happy.

Anyway, one night my ONLY vegetable was a salad, but I made a fruity salad because I figured that would be something everyone might like.

Luke would not stop grumbling and complaining about the salad.  I literally put enough for 1 bite of salad on his plate and he STILL wouldn't let up!  He finally ate it, and though he didn't admit it, I could tell it wasn't as bad as he was expecting because it was, after all, a sweeter salad. 

Suddenly I began making salad quite often, perhaps because the other veggies I usually make were not in season.  I finally found a salad that he actually admitted he liked - citrus salad with grapefruits and oranges in it.  I began making this even more.

I realized now that he ONLY liked spinach salad- not the crunchy "snowbird" lettuce (which he mistakenly called it one time instead of "Iceberg" :) )  Spinach salad is SO much better for you, so of course I was happy about this discovery!

He then began to like ranch

then I finally started making my favorite- a simple oil and vinegar, salt and pepper, and although there was some complaining that he wanted ranch or bleu cheese, he ate it and didn't hate it.

After about 8 months of learning to like salads, Luke officially LOVES salad!  In fact the other night he was practically crying about the fact that I didn't give him ENOUGH salad!!  This was with MY dressing too, not even his favorite dressing!  How cool is that?

This experience causes me to believe even more in the fact that if your kids keep trying something over and over again, they will eventually develop a taste for it (or at least not hate it and complain about it quite as much) and may even grow to love it!

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