Liking olives is NOT a milestone

[MizLizLemon]

Maybe it's just because I live in a naice area, but one of the most frequent boasts I hear, alongside the usual ones about reading levels and musical/sporting abilities, is that someone's DD or DS loves olives, which I frankly find really odd (not the child liking olives, but that it's considered something to boast about). Liking olives isn't a milestone, is it? I'm quite bed at middle class parenting, I'd never even heard of NCT until after I'd given birth, but the olives thing really puzzles me.

(Full disclosure, my DD hates olives and thinks they're the work of the devil).

I actually kept quiet about the strange food ds ate when he was weaning, it's midsummer this week, ds has just turned 18 months so last midsummer he was 6 months old ( just) one of his first foods was pickled herring, he loved it! He also ate the strawberry cake ( despite being a 2 hour drive from a hospital if he were to have an allergic reaction) in my defense I didn't let him try the snaps.

We had a group hv meeting to talk about food and she asked us how we were introducing food, the other mums were slowly introducing one very mild food a week to look out for allergies or doing different stages of pure-lumps when it got to my turn I just mumbled something about it going ok and looked at the floor.

It shocks me now that I didn't think about salt content, but ds seems to be ok.

LOVE olives

gothmum stuffed cherry tomatoes?! How is that possible? They're so tiny.

Eating mussels at a young age trumps olives.
Aim high people

DS is 4 snd like olives, and most other foods, nothing special though just his own tastes. If anything has butter on heaven help us though you would think he was being poisoned

And likes olives even

Well my sister-in-law is 50 years old, is a Cambridge-educated anthropologist and her husband also went to Cambridge and is now earns 100k a year. Their children also attended Cambridge, they own a house work 400k and he drives a top of the range Merc, they also 'summer' each year in a git (whatever the heck that is).

She HATES Brussels sprouts and calls them the 'devil's testicles'.

Give them this info and tell them to go themselves.

at summering in a git, patjen. I am always going to call it that now.

The first time I ate an olive I was a teenager. I was in a long haul flight and the in flight meal came with a little salad. The salad had a green grape dead centre and as I love grapes I saved it until the very end.

I was very disappointed to discover my grape was salty :-(

I avoided olives for years after that but will eat them by the bucketload now.

There are a million badge-of-honour milestones to confirm that your DCs are fully signed up members of the middle classes...

Some people hate them, they will never reach that milestone however you can remind boasters of the salt content, they can be very salty and not good for small children

There is a difference between biological milestones (eye contact, smiling, babbling, rolling over, crawling, walking etc) and cultural milestones. But they are milestones nonetheless!

Nothing more boring than other people's children's milestones unless I like the parents.

And if this is what they consider a milestone, eating a frigging olive, they most certainly are the worlds biggest twats.

I find that listening to other parents' boasting talking about their DCs' cultural milestones incredibly revealing and fascinating about the parents' priorities and cultural predispositions.

Oh, my DD loves mussels. So do I but they make me spew. Do mussels trump olives?

Dd has eaten olives from tiny....luvs em.... Certainly never thought of it as a milestone ....how odd.

My 7yo likes oysters.

Do I win the mc smuggery award?

The olive thing's a bit of a cliche now really isn't it? Shorthand for "look at what a great parent I am, exposing my children to such a broad range of experiences - no fussy eaters in my house"

Do chicken nuggets count?

We live in a naice area too and there is a lot of this infant culinary oneupmanship. I can trump them all because Twin B will nick whatever is on my plate. On holiday she snatched an entire octopus tentacle. It was a good half inch thick and complete with rubbery tentacles. She also loudly yummed over celeriac, venison, parma ham (salt! I know!) and tonic water.

Twin A however is mostly delighted by cake and cheesey strings .

Jesus Christ! Who cares? If one if my friends started banging on about what her kids ate I would assume she had been body swapped by a step ford wife.

Surely everyone finds this at worse twatty in the extreme and at best very very tedious.

Seek friends who can actually converse as adults.

I do remember one friend packing shop brought suchi for her kids play group picnic.

Said kid refused it and we had to offer the poor thing our sandwiches.

We all laughed at the mother. To her face I add. How bloody daft trying to impress over a child. Sad really.

I don't know what cultural milestones DD has passed? Other than the "would eat a McDonalds Happy Meal every day if we let her" milestone, if there is one?

She certainly hasn't passed any experimental eater ones (except the mussel eating one but that was just the once and has never been repeated so can't be used for boasting at least not if evidence is required).

She doesn't have much in the way of role models either sadly. My brother has only recently passed the "voluntarily eating a recognisable vegetable" milestone and he is in his 40s. Even then, it doesn't include green vegetables. Based on that, we can expect his olive milestone sometime in his mid-80s, possibly only if he mistakes it for a grape due to fading sight.

What kids eat stories are only interesting when the food stuffs are bizarre or unexpected.

For example, if your child decides to eschew everything at Christmas dinner except the sprouts, that could be a vaguely amusing anecdote. Your toddler begging for tripe may also qualify. Your toddler chewing your shoes would also work.

'Oh, rafferty just adores olives and caviar' isn't interesting to anyone and is clearly just MC smuggery at it's worst.

Happydays, maybe the child at the picnic had eaten sushi before & apparently enjoyed it? I know when mine were little they could love something one day & turn their noses up the next.

And some supermarket sushi rolls aren't miles away from a sandwich, really - a bit of tuna / other fish inside a wodge of carbohydrate. Did the mum smear them with wasabi first?

Not sure I agree that it's automatically twatty to mention what your kids eat, either. I love food, & have friends who love food, so I've enjoyed conversations about meals, restaurants etc., just like I love food threads on MN. I actually find it really interesting to hear about what other people cook & eat! Boasting about children's "achievements" is, I agree, tedious - but in theory not sure why discussing food is a sign of twattery.

stinkingbishop, that is impressive. I think I'm fairly adventurous but have tried & failed (on holiday) to like octopus. We do all love squid, though.

I'm pretty sure in Mediterranean countries where olives are commonly eaten this isn't a milestone as it's just food. The question is, are there middle class parents in Greece and Italy going "my 11 month old is eating sausage rolls, they have such a sophisticated palate".