Pleasing Picky Eaters

One morning last spring, I opened the cupboards to make my kids' school lunches and realized we were out of peanut butter, the one thing they would eat for lunch. We were running late as usual, and there was no time to run to the corner market, so I made both kids cheese sandwiches for lunch, and crossed my fingers that they'd actually eat them.

Both of my children have been picky eaters since birth. This is not an exaggeration. As an infant, Sabrina would take a bottle only if it were filled with breast milk and if I were the one feeding it to her. And in preschool, Jake informed me that Fridays would now be "jelly day." The rest of the week, he would only eat plain peanut butter sandwiches.

At 11 and 9, my kids' pickiness had not improved. So after school that day, I was tentative when I asked, "How'd you like your cheese sandwich for lunch today?"

Jake, thinking I was talking only to Sabrina, said, "Hey! When do I get a cheese sandwich?"

Confused, I replied, "Jake...You had a cheese sandwich for lunch today."

The back seat suddenly got very, very quiet. I soon learned Jake had been throwing his peanut butter sandwiches away every day, all year long, since September.

I thought of all of the time I had spent rushing to make his lunches, buying only seedless bread and creamy peanut butter, and I responded in a way that went against every motherly instinct I possessed, yet nonetheless felt right: I quit.

I would no longer waste my time making lunches that would only be thrown away without even being looked at, never mind tasted. And maybe, I secretly hoped, if Jake made his own lunches, he might actually eat them.

As it turned out, he did. He actually enjoyed making his own lunches, and more often than not, he actually ate them. Sabrina started making her own lunches, too.

One day, browsing the shelves at the local bookstore, I came across a cookbook written just for children. I couldn't help but wonder if our solution for school lunches worked so well, would expanding it help with their pickiness at breakfast and dinner, too?

I bought KIDS' COOKBOOK: HEALTHY AND FUN! AN IDEAL FIRST COOKBOOK FOR CHILDREN and eased both kids into helping me plan and prepare our meals.

Sabrina started by helping me chop peppers for a batch of gazpacho, and Jake made a ranch dip for a special veggie tray.

It turns out all I needed to do to please my picky eaters was pass the chef's hat to them.