Well, I'm no Bootsy...

The wife and I eat a wide variety of foods and enjoying trying new things. The kids... do not. While the young one is amiable enough to at least try sticking something in his mouth for awhile, they older one has a deadly fear of anything palate expanding.

We've heard the parts about slowly introducing new foods and the "it takes fifteen times" or whatever the number is, but we've blown past that number awhile ago. We don't force plate cleaning, but at least to try everything. Minds have been made up though, and every sample is immediately panned. For vegetables, corn is the one acceptable one. He's finally resigned to the fact that any tacos he have will have a nominal amount of lettuce. That's really about it.

It's funny because there are a couple things he happily shoves in his mouth that I absolutely loathe. For example, natto. He freaking loves it and I can barely even stand the sight of the stuff. Nor the smell. Nor the texture. It's the one thing he can lord over me. "Come oooooon, dad, try it!" he teases as he waives those foul smelling slime nuggets in my face...

I've finally mostly hit the point where what we make for dinner is what we've having. Eat it or don't. I still try to be somewhat accommodating. As you can so from my finely crafted cuisine, I don't think anything there is too crazy. Gotta find a middle ground somewhere I guess.

Are there any strategies that you've found that have been helpful? Do you try to sneak in as many vegetables into things as I do? I'm still working on ways to expand the palate. I'm sure we're doing something wrong here, but maybe it's not too late to correct the course (well, that probably applies to this whole parenting enterprise).