To have made my teenager eat a piece of courgette?

[NotWinstonChurchill]

To have made my teenager eat a piece of courgette?

15! year old daughter (NT) has become increasingly fussy with regards to vegetables. And it's got to the point where she will eat some things in some dishes, but not in others. For example:

Cucumbers - these have to have the centers removed, but has no problem eating them grated in tzatiki, or sliced and prepared (without being deseeded) in fancy Japanese dishes.
Tomatoes - will eat with seeds removed, or will eat whole when cooked down to nothing. Cherry toms will not eat, unless on pizzas or bruschetta, but will not eat in roasted vegetable melee.
Mushrooms - eats large Portobello mushrooms, or chopped up very small but has started picking out bits of mushroom from dishes. But will eat on pizza.
Peppers - will only eat green peppers, unless it's on a pizza or in chilli. But that can change at the drop of a hat as the other day decided that cooked green peppers were no longer the acceptable.
Courgettes - will eat grated in pasta dishes, or cooked with feta as fritters, but will not eat sliced and cooked.

I could go on. You get the idea.

I believe that everyone has some 'get out of jail free' cards when it comes to foods. I don't like forcing foods on people if they genuinely don't like them (I hated mushrooms and parsnips as a child). But this chopping and changing depending on a whim has pissed me right off. It fucks up my meal planning, makes extra work, wastes money and is just ridiculous.

Today I stood my ground. We've had tears, we've had tantrums, we've had threats of pocket money withdrawal permanently. I put one piece of steamed courgette on the plate and insisted she could not get down until it was eaten.

I won. It took half a hour, but by God I won.

Was I unreasonable?

This. It's a great way to encourage so many problems, disorganised eating being only one of them.

😱 yabvu and you have lost more than you can ever know.

I was made to chew a gristly, fatty lump of something in school dinner hall, and I was sick under the table on the floor, I was about 5 or 6, it was deeply upsetting, I was screamed at by the dinner lady, this just brought that back. I remember sitting there wailing and apologising over and over for vomiting up something I should not have been forced to eat.

A friend of mine from long ago was forced to eat every scrap and not leave the dining table for hours if he did not. He grew up to be forceful about food with his daughter, he was stick thin and utterly and totally obsessed with food and weight, his daughter cut contact with him in her teens - I am sure some of that was his obsessive behaviour about food.

Yes, it is indeed a stupid, stupid thing to do.

Did you mean 15 months? Because surely forcing someone who is nearly an adult to eat something is batshit?

Same here. School dinners in the 1970s where we were made to eat everything.

I was sick on several occasions but was too scared to tell my parents as parents tended to reinforce school punishments back then

She’s 15, not 5 or 3! You are abusive! In fact, you really are crackers. Forcing a teen to eat a miserable bit of fecking courgette. You have “ won” jack all OP!!

YABVU to treat a 15 year old like a toddler. Not allowed to get down from the table? Driving her to tears? Threatening taking her money away?

Questions to ask yourself:
If this works, and she begrudgingly swallows down food she dislikes because otherwise you'll treat her like a baby and withold money, will it have been truly worth it to you? What victory does this give you? Just the feeling that you won?

The real puzzlement is why you didn't nip this behavior in the bud years ago.

You should have evolved some system.

Yeah, unreasonable. Cook stuff you think she will eat, don't change the meal if she's just being fussy, but don't force her to eat.

What do you mean you won? Parenting is not a competition against your child. You don't win at it by defeating them.

You're going to have to sit down and think through your actual goals, here. If your primary goal is to prove to your teen that you can use the fact that she depends on you to force her to do something she finds disgusting then I guess this was probably a grand success. That bite of courgette didn't make her like courgette and didn't contribute to her overall nutrition/health, but it did feed your sense of control.

I think the better goals here are to 1) Manage your own workload and household expenses 2) Help your child develop a positive relationship with food and nourish her body adequately. Forcing her to put a bite of courgette in her mouth did nothing to further those goals. What would help is to get her more involved with both meal planning and preparation, give options where possible (cook things separately, ask for input as you go, let her pick around things, have easy alternatives in stock she can prep herself, etc), and don't offer unlimited amounts of high sugar, low-nutrient foods to fill up on instead.

Let go of the idea that you've succeeded/won if she eats all the parts of a meal and lost/failed if she doesn't. If you roast courgette to go with dinner but she wants to eat some carrots/raspberries/tomatoes/whatever raw produce is in stock in your kitchen instead then that's perfectly fine - tell her to get them out and wash them. More courgette for you. Or maybe when you say you're having chicken, rice and courgette for dinner you ask if she wants her courgette roasted with yours or if she wants to spiralize one for herself. If you make a curry with 3 different veg and she wants to leave the mushrooms in her bowl then that's fine. If she hates every bit of produce you've got to offer one evening then she can eat whatever parts of the meal she does want and tomorrow is a new day.

Yabvu

Today I stood my ground. We've had tears, we've had tantrums, we've had threats of pocket money withdrawal permanently. I put one piece of steamed courgette on the plate and insisted she could not get down until it was eaten.

I won. It took half a hour, but by God I won.

She's 15! How the fuck do you stop a 15 year old from 'getting down'? You actually refused to let her leave the table? Why didn't she just walk away - or were you physically stopping her?

And courgette is fucking awful anyway.

Def 15 years not months?? Not that either would be great. My father did this to me once when I was about 12 over a sausage. I didn't like them . Made me sit there until I'd eaten it. Took about an hour. No idea why I just didn't get up and leave but kids were more scared of their parents in the 70s/80s ( though he was not abusive) I absolutely loathe sausages and still won't eat them. I'm 55yo.

You lost the battle and lost the war. Taking half an hour to force your child to eat a vegetable in the form she does not like is unnecessary.
When I was a very young child I hated fish (still do but am now vegetarian anyway) and my father was forcing me to eat fish. I was scared of fish bones in my mouth and there were lots poking about in my mouth and throat.
My Dad was furious and began pushing forkful after forkful of bony fish into my mouth when I couldn’t swallow it and I started choking but he kept on pushing massive amounts of fish in whilst I was sobbing.
Finally I gagged and was sick, got a hard slap across the face and it is still a stand out childhood memory for me. My Dad was a bully, if one of my DC flatly refuses to eat a food item I will ask why and encourage but if it is an outright NO then I won’t start ranting or threatening them.
I think you should apologise to your child OP and be aware that your daughter will remember this for a long time to come.

I wouldn’t eat steamed courgette either.

when the OP post in 5 years time. “My daughter won’t talk to me and I don’t understand why she’s no contact”, we should all remind her of this day she was abusive and particularly awful to her 15 year old daughter.

Op, This wasn’t about a courgette, this was about power and abusing her and showing her you were in control. you’re an emotionally immature women who has battled her daughter for self gain. This was noting to do with the courgette, it was to do with you, wanting her to be at your whim. She’s going to hate you and she’ll never ever forget this moment forever. Aren’t you ashamed? did someone force you to do things like this too? What lesson do you think you genuinely taught her?

I see huge value in stopping the increased pickiness, but I think you could have handled the whole situation better by drawing a line in the sand (ideally a while ago) and simply telling her you weren't going to work around her fussiness anymore. Maybe, as previous poster suggested give her a certain number of get out of jail free cards, and other than that, just not pander. If she leaves things she leaves things. You don't cook other stuff for her or let her fill up on biscuits but you don't berated her for it or take it personally. Making meal times a battle is not going to make her life or yours any better.

For what it's worth my uncle would not eat any vegetable except peas as a kid. Most meals his dad (who had seen men starve to death in WWII) insisted he sit at the table until he ate them and if he was still there half an hour later he could get down but they were served up at the next meal (his mum used to throw them out and say he'd eaten them when grandad wasn't there). That uncle is now a retired social worker. A man who made a huge difference to the lives of many people in hugely difficult situations. He's in great health, with three kids and two grandkids. He eats a few more veg nowadays, but only if they're served in a cooked medley of some sort (stew, bolognese, chili, curry, etc.), for a roast he still eats only peas. It's good not to be a fussy eater, OP, but it's not that important.

Yes.

Poor girl. You're being ridiculously controlling.

Plus... She eats loads more veg than many teenagers!

Sounds like you want to have the last word. Exhausting.

I’d be embarrassed about this if I were you, not posting about it on MN.

Shame on you. This isn't about food, it's about power over your daughter. She will remember this.

If you want her to overcome the pickiness there are better ways. Get her cooking. Give her more autonomy, not less.

If this is typical parenting from you, then it wouldn't surprise me if she is already starting to eat in a disordered way.

Chopping and changing would also annoy me, but I'd just carry on making meals and she can either eat them or not. No big deal, shes 15 she can make herself some toast or a sandwhich.

But forcing her to sit at the table until she eats a piece of something she doesn't want too is weird, especially at 15. Shes not 5 and refusing her vegetables. On the surface it doesn't seem a big deal but actually it seems abusive and controlling.

Because OP said she wasn't so fussy before

That was my attitude and now my kids just live off toast. Toast is always preferable to anything involving vegetables to them. I don't think it's a great situation. We can only eat out in places that offer just chips which is very limiting. Giving that choice has made them fussier and they now eat significanty less variety than they did.