Back to the subject at hand though. As you may or may not know, I am a mother of two wonderful girls and food has always been an issue in our home. So in comes French Kids Eat Everything. I have to admit I was curious but not very hopeful. I was expecting a stuffy, "You have to do this!", "You are doing this wrong" type of book but I was pleasantly surprised to find the opposite. The author Karen is a Canadian woman married to a French man with two little girls (five and three years old) when one day Karen gets the insane idea to move the family from Canada to the little French village her husband grew up in.
Sounded good to me at first, being near family in a picturesque little village by the sea. But what seems good in fantasy is rarely as good in reality. No amount of planning can prepare Karen for the culture shock and loneliness she is about to encounter. I really felt for her when she recounted her many social faux pas and her difficulties with two very picky children in a country where children are expected to eat what adults eat and eat how they eat. This leads Karen to come up with a plan on retraining her children to eat more like French children but in actuality Karen is retraining herself as her children are assimilating pretty well on their own.
In the end I decided to try out some of her "rules" for myself and I am quite pleased. While my kids aren't overly picky they are complainers and they don't eat as much or as well as I'd like them too. Basically I feel I need to change my attitude about food. No longer am I forcing my children to eat but they do have to try everything. Also we don't talk negatively about food, I serve smaller portions and the kids only get one snack a day. Surprisingly dinner plates are now coming up clean!
If you are experiencing food struggles in your home I highly suggest French Kids Eat Everything it couldn't hurt to try right? : )
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