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?

She sounds tricky to feed but yabvu. I was a picky eater - still am as an adult but I can cope a lot better and hide it a lot better as I have far more control and autonomy. I'm also more willing to try new things at my own pace. People challenging my "no" to things make me feel like a child again and I am honestly amazed how pushy people can be - why do you feel the need to control what someone else chooses to put in their mouth? Amazingly, I dislike a lot of the same foods now that I've disliked since childhood but people mostly accept it better now. It makes me so sad for my childhood self.

Your Dd is old enough to be afforded such control and autonomy and tbh, I think most children over toddler age should have some age appropriate degree of it. Meddling with someone's appetite can be a very bad idea. Why did you NEED her to eat 1 piece of courgette? A 15 yo will see the need for control loud and clear. It'll speak volumes to her. It'll be your own fault if you put her off entirely.

You sound like a lunatic. What exactly did you gain by this?

all that fuss would annoy me too,I can see where you were coming from.

Non returning 3 word poster name OP...I'm hoping no teenager was harmed in the making of this thread.

I don’t think you achieved anything other than you have forced your will on her.

In some instances this can be necessary and good, ie safety issues, boundaries on truly bad behaviour because parents do need to be in charge but when it comes to eating it is inappropriate, counter productive and just plain wrong.

Not a very healthy diet is it

What is your point

I thought the same but they are pretty much daily now. Poster puts a post up that will annoy lots of people, gets lots of responses, never returns. I report them, half the time they are then removed.

If people stopped and realised, these posts would stop. They seem easy to spot. If they are immediately rage inducing and posted in the evening you can almost guarantee they wont be back.

Definitely unreasonable!

Shes 15 ffs, you can’t keep her sat at the table until she eats a piece of vegetable that’s insane.

By all means say “I’m not making anything else / you can’t go and eat all the convenience or snack food in the house instead, and I’m not changing my meal plans constantly if your likes and dislikes keep changing” (or words to that effect) but you force a teen to eat a specific thing against their wishes.

Your words “ by god I won” are really worrying and make it seem that this is about power rather than about her health/ reasonable meal planning. It’s not healthy to be having power struggles like this over a vegetable.

I think you should apologise and be sure not to do it again. My all means make it clear you’re going to cook what you’re cooking within reasonable parameters of known likes and dislikes, and she can’t expect you to anticipate ever moving preferences, but no forcing to eat a particular thing.

If she picks mushrooms out of things, so what?

Have you tried getting her involved in the cooking and planning and even doing the cooking some days? She’s more than old enough to do some cooking, and it might make her more appreciative of the effort that goes in/ willing to eat the food as she’s cooked it.

OP not replied? At 15 it doesn't matter if she's picky, she can figure it out herself.

Extremely unreasonable.

Imagine someone trying to force you to eat something you didn't want to, because they thought you didn't have a good enough reason for saying no. I might cry or 'tantrum' if someone I thought had power over me tried to do that to me and I felt unable to escape, and I'm a lot older than 15. It's abusive behaviour.

I wouldn't be surprised if she never touches courgette as an adult, as a result. Poor girl. Most teenagers would have got up and left, no matter what threats you made.

She’s 15. She eats what she’s served or she makes her own meals.

OP it was a slice of vegetable. Ignore the others who said it’s abuse fgs!

Hitler springs to mind.

It’s not about what it was. It was about forcing a teen to sit at the table and not get down until she had eaten in so the OP felt she won.

If it was that trivial I’m sure the DD would have eaten it to keep the peace. But instead her mother treats her like a toddler.

And I presume you would be fine with being forced to eat something? No? Thought not.

If i had kids i always said i would never make or force them to eat anything they did not like or want.
And i would never say no to them having food when they wanted.

The above happend to me and i hated it.

It needs a lot of preparation to taste anyway good.
Too much work in my opinion.

Make her do the chopping.

What purpose would that serve?

Well you have a much more compliant 15 year old than mine were at that age. Why not apologise and encourage your DD to cook some things she does like? At 15 there isn't really much need to cook separate meals for a DC, they can with a little help manage by themselves

Your examples are all things that’s taste and texture is very different depending how it’s cooked/presented and totally normal to like one and not the other. As it’s seems to be the plain product and not the foodstuff as an ingredient it also sounds easy for her to leave out rather than any variation of meals for you. The courgette is a good example as it was easy for her to eat the rest of the meal and just leave the courgettes aside. Fwiw I adore courgettes but wouldn’t choose to eat them steamed as they just go mushy and tasteless. I don’t blame her for not wanting to eat it and can’t imagine forcing with weld my teenagers to sit there til they ate anything. YABVU

At fifteen, she can start cooking her own meals if she doesn't like what you've made, and she should be cooking one family meal per week.

Sometimes the way the food is cooked can make a huge difference to its pallatability. Grated courgettes have pretty much the same vits/minerals and amount of fibre as steamed ones But steamed slices can taste strong or go slimy while the grated version usually just absorbs the flavours of the food/s they are in.
Why not just leave your DD to pick out anything that she doesn't want and leave it on the side of the plate. Or maybe don't even serve her something that you know she doesn't want.