Food is a Big Deal

Remember when the neighbor kid comes over and wants to stay for dinner?  Everyone likes spagetti, but at first bite the neighbor pulls a face and is done eating.  The noodles are the wrong size or the sauce has lumps; the face says it all.  Feeding a foster child is like feeding the neighbor child three times a day.  It does not matter what age the child is.  You are going to experience drama with food.  The most important thing to remember is that the child is not intentionally being rude or ungrateful.  Most of the time the child has just never been taught the correct response to liking or disliking food.  Some foster kids are extremely picky and others cannot stop eating.  Nathan was a three month old baby when he came to our family so we did not experience food issues until he just over a year.  Seven months later, I thought food would not be a problem.  Silly me.  Nathan has issues with textures.  For the first three months of his life he sat in a car seat and had a bottle propped up.  He did not know how to cuddle or how to receive touch.  With the help of a wonderful organization called First Steps I learned how to teach him to like touch.  We always touched him gently and slowly.  When we held him, we would run our fingers lightly up and down his arm or around his face.  For a normal child who has been held since birth, this is extremely ticklish and cannot be tolerated for long.  Nathan grew to love it and would ask his Grandpa to do it every time he came over.  When he crawled, he would only crawl on the carpet and never on the hard floor.  Grass outside was intolerable until he was almost three years old.  Food is all about texture, which I learned pretty quickly.  If it was sticky or slippery, Nathan would not eat it.  Everything I put on his plate was poked with one finger and judged immediately.  Nathan is six years old now and most of his touch issues are behind him but his menu remains very limited to normal kid food.  It includes his three staples of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, macaroni and cheese and spagettios.  My eight year old foster daughter, Diamond, loved to eat.  I got the impression that her mom relied heavily on frozen food to feed her.  Oatmeal and scrambled eggs were new foods to her and she loved them immediately.  She was not afraid to try things.  However, Diamond's mom would forget to bring home food when she was drinking so Diamond would have to make do.  One day I was picking up Diamonds room I found some bananas going bad under her bed.  The next day there was a box of cereal.  Thanks to my foster parent training, I knew this was a neglected child saving food for the day when she would not have any.  I waited until I had her on an errand in the car away from the other kids and told her that I found some food under her bed.  She was quiet about it.  I reassured her that there was always enough food in our house and she did not have to save any.  She was allowed to go in the cupboards and refrigerator whenever she wished.  The hoarding did not stop right way but I kept reminding Diamond that food would always be available and eventually it stopped.  I felt it was important not to make her feel bad and to allow her to do what made her feel more comfortable.  Food for Shelly at 17 is a funny issue to me.  Shelly will try just about anything but when she doesn't like something the effect is immediate.  She shivers and gets this screwed up look on her face.  Some times the food gets spit right back out.  I cannot help but laugh every time it happens.  She is just so dramatic about it that is hilarious.  I think it is important for a foster parent to buy food that the child likes.  First, this makes your job of encouraging good eating habits so much easier.  Second, it is good for my biological kids to experience some new stuff.  Shelly does not like eggs in any form, so I make sure that I have serve other things with eggs that she likes.  Nathan has been taught to try something new with his macaroni and cheese.  Diamond loved lasagna and when I made it, I always announced that we were eating  Diamond's lasagna for dinner.  Kids who have been neglected come to us in many forms that often include malnourishment, pickyness, and hoarding.    These are things that a foster parent can work on and fix.  My goal as a foster parent is always to heal the hurt. Find out what your foster child likes to eat and serve it often.  Use it as a platform to try new foods and never, never withhold food as a punishment.  Food is about love and caring and that is what a foster child needs more than anything.