Flamewars I have taken a pass on today (and today's methods of passing)

[serene]

* Why I think it's moronic to force a kid to eat "just a taste" of food zie doesn't wanna eat. (Decided to kill the thread -- my blood pressure didn't need it.)

* Why it's not an insult to be called (or asked if you are) a transperson. (Defused by giving personal testimonial of a time I was called trans in a newspaper article and was amused/flattered.)

* Why it does not follow that having more partners means (a) cancelling out the flaws of your existing partner(s); or (b) having inherently more jealousy to deal with (because monogamous people can just assume there's no one else. Yeah, right.) (Tried the broken-record approach, with a modicum of success.)

Comments

side notes on said avoided flamewars

[redbird]

I hope this doesn't feel like attempting to have said arguments.

Quite. Some people will use "trans" when insulting others--and some will use white, black, female, male, or any number of other things that happen to be true of some of us. I've occasionally been taken for male by strangers who realized their mistake during the conversation: I'm amused, they act embarrassed.

I could see an argument for "have you ever tasted this? I'll save a bit here in case you change your mind" or the like, but I suspect that part of why I now happily eat almost every vegetable there is, is that my parents didn't insist I had to when I was a kid. Vegetables, yes: but if that meant rotating the same three or so day after day, year after year, it was acceptable to them and to me.

maybe I AM a moron, but...

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

re: "just a taste" of foods they don't want to eat--

I struggle with this one literally every day. I am a sensitive taster, and so is, apparently, my child. I don't want to force her to eat stuff she doesn't want, because I myself was traumatized by such acts when I was a child (my mother protests "it couldn't have happened more than once!" like that doesn't make it a trauma). OTOH, I find myself asking my daughter to please try things, because otherwise she doesn't eat whole classes of foods (e.g., no meat, but ALSO no tofu, and no beans, so you see the problem), and it's extremely difficult to feed her. That in combination with my understanding (don't have time for the internet research right now, sorry) that it takes something like SEVEN introductions of a new food before it becomes familiar enough to be "liked," I find myself returning to the practices of my grandmother and asking her to eat "no thank you helpings." And you know what, sometimes it works, and she learns that french cut green beans aren't icky.

If anyone, you or Serene, has anything to offer on how to actually deal with this situation, I'm HAPPY to hear it, truly. In the meantime, it's a good thing that Serene avoided a flamewar, and a good thing I wasn't in whatever journal that was in originally. :^/

Re: maybe I AM a moron, but...

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Here is how I dealt with it with my two, and it worked *really* well with a picky eater and a non-picky one:

I bought divided plates. Three divisions. Every single meal (breakfast, lunch, and supper), I offered three healthy things for them to eat. Nothing deep-fried, nothing loaded with sugar. Stuff with nutrition in it. Some variety. Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, but none that I knew they hated.

Then I let them eat. If they wanted something in one of the divisions, they ate it. If they didn't, they left it. If they wanted more, they had more. They had favorites (applesauce, plain chicken, spaghetti with nothing on it, etc.), and I repeated them more often than others, but the main thing was a healthy variety. It *never* happened, even with the picky one (who was *really* picky), that there was nothing there for them to eat. And they never felt pressured to try anything, so they tried stuff eventually on their own. The picky one still prefers zir simple, unadorned way of eating, but zie will try new stuff if it looks interesting to zir.

Re: maybe I AM a moron, but...

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :^)

Re: maybe I AM a moron, but...

[leback.livejournal.com]

I think there may be a difference between asking her to eat the no-thank-you helping and forcing her to: to the extent that attitude affects her reaction (and it's always affected mine, a lot), there may be a big difference between "I don't like this, but I'm choosing to eat a little" and "Somebody's making me eat this." The former seems a lot more likely to lead to occasional successes...

That said--does your daughter participate in the preparation of food at all? This one probably doesn't work for everybody, but I know my own attitudes toward particular foods have often been affected by my being the one to cook them--in part, sometimes, because particular ingredients or cooking smells attract my interest, and sometimes because trying to cook something well forces me to think about it from the point of view of someone who likes it, and that occasionally shifts my own attitude. Plus, it just plain makes me more adventurous about new dishes when I have myself concocted them from individual ingredients I like. So you never know; it might help your daughter...

I'm curious about what that "seven times" thing means--is it an average of how many times people usually try things before "liking" them? It seems off for me--I will frequently like things on the first try, or not at all--but it's an interesting notion.

Re: maybe I AM a moron, but...

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Yes, she LOVES to cook, and that does help a little. She's a bit of a conundrum that way-- a very picky eater, but one who loves to watch cooking shows and adores cooking. She just adores cooking a very few things. ;^) I have this vision of her opening a restaurant when she grows up... catering to "picky eaters"!

I think that the "seven times" is an "up to" kind of a number. The idea is that, even if you don't think you like it the first time, if you keep trying it, you may eventually train your tastebuds to enjoy or at least not reject the new flavor (or flavor combination). I know that it's quite true with my husband. It took him quite a few goes on a new dish before he liked it, and that was one that had ONLY ingredients that he liked for sure! Anything with a truly new taste requires quite a bit of time for him to adjust to.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

I passed on, "Why I'm a good father because I told my teenage son his conversation style is passive-aggressive because he wants to take control of the conversation even though he doesn't know it."

Go both of us!

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

We rock.

I don't want to argue either

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

No, I really, don't! The subject interests me, that's all, and I don't know where the original conversation was. My mom was into organic gardening and lots of interesting veggies before anyone else was. So I grew up with the "you have to taste it" rule. As a result, before my tyramine restrictions started, I would try anything except for venison and elk, which I just don't like and ostrich and emu, which are taboo to be since they're relatives of the kiwi bird. This is a major contrast to kids I knew whose parents gave up on them and who only ate hot dogs and hamburgers. One of them grew up an unhealthy adult who still eats a narrow, boring diet. I see the rule as a positive thing. It's a way to expose children to lots of new foods, instead of letting them just decide that something looks yucky or be obnoxious that day for no reason. I'm glad my mom made me taste Swiss Chard and kohlrabi and parsnips (I hate those) and pickled onions (love 'em) and dilled beets and German cooking and fresh-baked homemade pizza and unusual Christmas cookies and strange things from Chinese stores. Sometimes I'm not happy with things she did to me, but this is a good memory.

Re: I don't want to argue either

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I exposed my kids to plenty of new foods. I just didn't make food into a power struggle. There are kids who will fight hard not to have to eat what they don't want, and so long as they're getting nutritious food, each meal should not have to be a fight. And now there goes my blood pressure again, so I'm dropping this.

[leback.livejournal.com]

On that third one, I think it's usually a good bet that it doesn't follow that having more partners means [fitb], except possibly where [fitb] is "scheduling issues." :-P

For my part, having more partners does sometimes "cancel out" some flaws of other partners (I have a lot less compulsion to look to either of my partners to be "the perfect man" when one person doesn't have to be the be-all and end-all of what I can have in a romantic relationship), but it wouldn't touch others (*any* partner I have needs to have certain qualities, such as honesty, for the relationship to work).

What's more, I was a nightmarishly jealous monogamous person. Knowing I had to be the be-all and end-all of what my partner could have in a romantic relationship was actually what did it to me, I think. It meant that any time my partner showed the vaguest interest in something that wasn't me, I viewed that as suggesting my own potential inadequacy. Even if I didn't think he'd cheat or leave me (and generally, I didn't), I couldn't handle the thought that he might be settling for me, so I flipped out over anything that put it into my head.

[baerana.livejournal.com]

*nods*

absolutely, I agree 100%.


For my part, having more partners does sometimes "cancel out" some flaws of other partners (I have a lot less compulsion to look to either of my partners to be "the perfect man" when one person doesn't have to be the be-all and end-all of what I can have in a romantic relationship),


the only "canceling out" my partners do is, one likes a certain type of movie the other won't watch, one likes mexican, the other likes japaneese - stuff like that. It's not a matter of minimizing each other's "flaws" at all, it just means I now sometimes have someone to eat sushi with :)

but it wouldn't touch others (*any* partner I have needs to have certain qualities, such as honesty, for the relationship to work).

absolutely

and I was also very jealous as a mono person. Another person could mean the end of my relationship. Even if was a matter of my (straight) boyfriend commenting that his (straight) male friend liked to play raquetball and I didn't, it set loose the green eyed monster

[leback.livejournal.com]

The canceling-out I was thinking of is similar, but sometimes it pertains to things that are more fundamental to me than sushi tends to be. :-) For instance, one of my partners is not particularly fond of idle physical contact--he just doesn't like to be touched much--and that would be much harder for me to deal with if I didn't have someone else around I get to unleash my snuggly impulses on. Ditto for getting to indulge particular bits of my sense of humor or getting to enjoy particular types of intellectual repartee, and also for getting to feel attractive in certain ways... None of these turn out to be things I need in any given romantic relationship for that to be a good relationship, but they're things I need to be getting somewhere in my life. Some of them, of course, are possible in platonic contexts, but even then there's a difference in having them on the kind of full-time basis that tends to come only with romantic relationships for me.

(As an aside, a lot of the issues I'm referring to would be better described as incompatibilities between people than flaws on either person's part, but my impression is that when many people talk about flaws in this context, they're fairly likely to be talking about things that I'd label incompatibilities instead. I don't know whether that was true of the original discussion in this case, but it seems a fair bet.)

Seebling the racquetball thing, completely. :-)

Food is love!

[ailbhe]

I'm personally interested in this. I don't want to argue, in that I don't want to fight, but I would really like to discuss. Our policy is "don't make the baby cry" which means that we don't *force* force her to do anything - except where immediate personal safety is involved - but I do ask her to taste foods she initially refuses. It's hard to tell why she's refusing at this stage.

My mother used to get us to smell foods. If we didn't like the smell, we probably wouldn't like the taste, and she just trusted that we wouldn't be idiotic about it - and since she didn't have a Food Is Power thing, nor did we, so we weren't idiotic.

Food is love, on a primal level. It's important not to smother my baby with "love", however I choose to express it. I just don't actually know how to *do* it yet, because I'm still an L-plate mother.