When my daughter was about two there were seventeen foods she would eat - including apples, bananas, blueberries, bread, carrots, cheerio sausages, cheese, eggs, fresh squeezed orange juice, fish fingers, hummus, milk, spaghetti and Weetbix. I was relaxed about this because (apart from the cheerios) it seemed like quite a healthy diet.
Everyone said that it was natural for children (especially little girls) to be fussy eaters. My mother reckoned I didn't eat a vegetable until I was ten years old and it didn't do me any harm (twitch twitch). And, of course, I was never going to be one of those parents who forced my child to eat something - or so I thought.
Fast-forward a few years and at the age of six my daughter still ate only those seventeen foods. She hadn't added any new foods to the list as I'd expected her to. In fact, she had pretty much refused to even try anything new. It was time for action.
I'd read some random fact that a child needed to taste a food sixteen times before they knew whether they liked it or not. And so I started with broccoli. About every second night I'd insist she try just one small spoonful.
She was not impressed. From the expression on her face you'd have thought I was trying to poison her. All I was wanted was for her to become accustomed to new tastes. It worked. She gradually became less averse to the flavour and began feeding herself reasonably sized servings. These days she claims broccoli is her favourite vegetable.
