The most recent example of this was when I was grocery shopping last Wednesday. That morning Grendel woke up looking sicker than she had been in a long time. She spent 2 hours laying on the floor or the couch hugging herself because her tummy hurt. I have spent over a year slowly removing foods from her diet in an attempt to heal her tummy and her mind, and we have definitely been moving in the right direction. I haven't jumped into removing any food without carefully considering the pros and cons because I wanted her to have as varied a diet as possible and to feel like she fit in around other kids. Plus, as her safe food list has gotten smaller, cooking for her has become increasingly complex and time consuming. Each time I remove a food or group of foods from her diet, we face a few days of tantrums about wanting to eat that food, understandably. Which is exactly how I ended up in the grocery store on Wednesday morning.
After Grendel woke up with a tummy ache, I realized that I needed to remove a group of foods that I had been dreading: fruits. The kids eat fruit every morning and as snacks throughout the day. Grendel can't eat the crackers or yogurts at snack time at school, so I send her with a dried fruit and seed trail mix. Fruit was our last easy school-approved snack (we eat a lot of almond butter around our house, but all child friendly activities outside of our home are nut free). It was the last easy toss it in the diaper bag as we run out the door item. It was the last safe snack the kids could eat at play dates and parties. Plus, it's fruit! Fruit is so nutritious. How could it be harming my kids?
I knew that we were planning to start the introductory phase of the GAPS diet this weekend, in which you temporarily can't eat fruit, so I figured I would start the fruit restriction a few days early to ease into things and hopefully see a resolution of belly pain. But as soon as I told Grendel and the Hobbit that we would not be able to have fruit for breakfast, the crying and the tantrums started. When Grendel found out she couldn't bring her favorite fruit and seed mix to school things escalated. I hadn't planned on the kids going fruit free and was ill prepared, so I packed Grendel a jar of guacamole for her school snack (ordinarily the idea of eating guacamole by the spoonful would thrill her, but instead it infuriated her because it was far inferior to her beloved trail mix). I finally managed to get both tantrumming kids out the door, into the car, and off to school, albeit 15 minutes late.
I left a grumpy Grendel with her teacher and brought the hobbit, who had been on a hunger strike throughout all of breakfast, to the grocery store with me so I could find acceptable snacks for the kids. I started in produce so I could buy guacamole ingredients, in case Grendel decided during school that it had, once again, become desirable and might want more later in the day (spoiler alert: it didn't). While I was picking out some Roma tomatoes, Hobbit started grunting and bouncing up and down in her cart seat. I noticed she was pointing at a carton of cherry tomatoes. They were organic, and since hobbits go into starvation mode rather quickly after missing one meal, I popped the carton open and let her snack on them in the store. She had several grandparent-types gushing over the "cute little girl eating the cherry tomatoes as a snack." We managed to get all of the groceries into the cart without any further tantrums and were on our way to the checkout, when...
Stranger, a woman about my age: What's she eating?
Me: Cherry tomatoes.
Stranger: Oh, I wish my kids would eat healthy snacks like that! You're so lucky!
Okay, full disclosure: I can't recall if she actually said "you're so lucky" at the tail end of her comment or if my brain has inserted it for the re-telling, but it was definitely implied. And I thought, I'm so NOT lucky! I spent 2 hours this morning with my sick child trying to explain to her why she can't eat fruit, one of her favorite things. The doctors can't figure out what's wrong. She and her sister both do hours of therapy each week to be able to cope with things that other kids their age don't even have to think about: chewing, walking on grass, going to semi-loud places, dealing with disproportionate fears and anxiety. I spend at least 3-4 hours in the kitchen every day because there are virtually no prepackaged foods that my kids can eat. That bone broth and those fermented foods aren't going to make themselves! Plus, I've had to convince a 4 year old and a 1 year old that our food is just as good as the food that they see their friends eating. I have jumped through hoops this year ensuring that Grendel was able to eat a cupcake at every class birthday party this year. Do you know how hard it is to make cupcakes with no sugar, flour, or butter?!?!?! And Grendel hasn't always eaten this way! My background is dietetics, so I did my best to feed her a healthy diet, but I certainly fed her many of the toddler-friendly foods that her peers ate. Before we had to remove gluten and dairy from her diet her favorite foods were mac and cheese, ice cream, cookies, goldfish crackers, cheese sticks, gogurts, and cake. She also wouldn't touch anything green and dinner was always a battle of the wills. But through hours of research, cooking, tantrums, self-doubt, and cleaning up uneaten food, she has become more adventurous. She has adapted. I'm very proud of how she has accepted this nutrition plan much better than most adults would have. As for he Hobbit? Well, she's kind of just along for the ride. I think all of these dietary changes are necessary for and beneficial to her as she seems to be following right along in her big sister's steps with regards to her health, but she never learned the joy that is Kraft mac and cheese so she doesn't know what she's missing. However, she does know that it is watermelon season and her precious has suddenly disappeared from the refrigerator.
All this to say, I wasn't lucky in getting "good" eaters. (What is that anyway? Why place value words like good or bad on the way a little kid eats?) we have worked through blood, sweat, and tears to get to this point. I've earned a child who will eat cherry tomatoes from the carton. So please, don't compare my kids to yours. If you see us in the grocery store or at the park and you wonder about the seaweed my kids are eating you can say, "That is so great that they are eating such healthy foods!" or "Way to go, momma, thinking outside of the box with that snack!"
When someone makes the comparison between my adventurous eaters and their picky child, I usually just smile and say thank you. Or when I'm having a really hard day and the kids have already had a dozen tantrums because they just want a bloody piece of fruit and I have to tell them no, I might say, "Well, thank you, but they have multiple food restrictions so they have had to learn to eat this way. I guess it's a blessing and a curse that they react so badly to so many foods that they have kind of been forced to eat a healthy diet." But one of these days, and it may be tomorrow when I have to tell the kids no more nuts or seeds, only soup, for the next couple of weeks, I might just sock them in the face.
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