FRENCH KIDS EAT EVERYTHING / A YEAR LATER

PIN

The other night I made Caramelized Fennel, a recipe from Plenty. It was delicious, sweet, crunchy… I may have licked my plate. It’s a beautiful dish: the fennel is sliced into fans, seared in hot butter, and caramelized along with fennel seeds, until it’s a deep, rich brown. I put it on the table, served it up for all of us and without hesitation, Gigi gobbled it up. When Kyle and I were getting ready for bed that night I remarked how proud I was of her. She’s eaten fennel plenty of times but I love that she has learned to trust that what we put on her plate is good, even if it’s a very “adult” dish like the caramelized fennel. I realized it’s been a year since we began our French Kids Eat Everything approach to feeding our family, and she’s come such a long way. She loves kale, broccoli, radishes, pine nuts, spinach, squash. It’s taken a ton of work but it’s been so worth it, and I’m so proud of her.

We had a big dinner recently with lots of friends and their kids. It was a fun, busy dinner. G chose to eat her dinner with the grownups, and when she was done, she asked to be excused. It made me feel like the method was really working because, essentially, we are asking her to eat like an adult. I was so proud of her in that moment because she really surprised me. Expecting her to eat like an adult when we are eating dinner together as a family is a lot easier to do than when we are out at dinner, eating at a friends house, or have a house full of people.

For the most part she does eat like an adult (except for when she occasionally uses her fork as a magic wand, pretends to be a pirate at the table or eats broccoli like the cookie monster). We have worked so hard, and asked so much of her, and she has risen to the occasion as kids do when you raise your expectations. Here we are, a year later, and slowly but surely she has come to eat the way we do. The consistency is the hard work, but the trust aspect of the process is the most rewarding part. I really can’t express how proud I am of our girl… and of us, really. It’s been a whole family project. Next week, Baby Lu will join the fray. A whole new adventure.

I’m really proud of G when she follows the very strict rules we have set up for her around everything to do with food. We are in no way perfect, have many off days and failed meals, but overall she has really risen to meet our expectations and for that I’m really proud. I’m proud of her, and proud of us for sticking with it.

*I offended a couple of people with the way the post was previously written. I did not intend for it to appear that I was comparing G to any other children. I’ve changed it to accurately express my feelings. I sincerely apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings.

I wrote a guest post for What To Expect about our choice to use/success with this method, you can read it here.

Get the French Kids Eat Everything book here.