We had orange roughy tonight for dinner. They were just lightly breaded fillets. My 10 yr.old walks up, sits down and says, "what kind of chicken is this?" I answered, "it's not chicken--it's fish. He said, "it's really good." So I told him it was orange roughy. He made kind of a funny face and then abandoned it and just said again that it tasted good.
I know this is not a big deal to you; but it is a huge deal in our house. You see at the age of 10, my son seems to be getting past his picky-eater stage with no help from me whatsoever. Things that he used to look suspiciously at and refuse to try, he now eats. I'm not a huge fan of hot lunch, but now about once a week he'll announce that he wants to have it so I get a little vacation from helping him get his lunch ready.
The amount of restaurants we can now eat out at is drastically increasing since he has decided tomato-based sauces are o.k. That opens up the world of Italian and Mexican restaurants for sure. He will even eat things he doesn't really like that much; as long as it isn't too bad.
This kid was such a picky eater up until he realized that there were a lot of good foods he was missing out on. I think he just got bored with eating the same things all the time. He is still at his core a little picky. He won't drink soda. He doesn't think he likes it and I am all good with discouraging him from doing so. He also won't eat pies or drink smoothies. Again, fine with me, since he gets enough sugar in other sweets.
It's just so cool to see your kids mature. It seems like yesterday that my mom, ex-husband and I had to pin him down to take an antibiotic when he was little because he refused to drink it. It didn't work; he spit it out. (Did I mention how strong willed he was as a child? Or the kinder description: determined.)
I just remember thinking that you can battle your kids about a lot of things, but you really can't force them to eat something they don't want to eat. At least, I was never successful at it. At some point I gave up and counted my blessings that there were a lot of healthy foods that he liked. And, though I was sick of always making the same things, I figured some day he would expand his horizons. And that some day is now. Yea!