{"id":1677,"date":"2012-08-20T09:10:48","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T14:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stories.daddytales.com\/?p=1677"},"modified":"2012-08-20T09:10:48","modified_gmt":"2012-08-20T14:10:48","slug":"an-expanding-appetite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2012\/08\/20\/an-expanding-appetite\/","title":{"rendered":"An Expanding Appetite"},"content":{"rendered":"

My oldest son has always been an adventurous eater<\/a>. His little brother, on the other hand, has been stuck in the chicken and pasta phase for far too long. He tries other things, but often makes a dramatic “I hate this \u00a0face” long before the food even passes through his lips.<\/p>\n

Realizing that there’s no way to force a child to like different foods, I’ve taken a rather straightforward approach: either you eat what you’re served, or you go hungry. It’s simple, and it’s easy, but it hasn’t done much to improve his palate.<\/p>\n

In restaurants, it can be particularly frustrating. There’s little point in taking kids out to eat if they’re just going to get macaroni and cheese or a hot dog. I mean I can cook those things at home for a fraction of the price, and usually better than the restaurant (well, almost better<\/a>).<\/p>\n

A couple weeks ago, the boys and I were in a restaurant over at Crystal River that specialized in seafood. I ordered a bucket of crabs, and my oldest son got some snow crabs. My youngest announced that he was going to be adventurous, and ordered a chicken pasta.<\/p>\n

After a few minutes of watching us crack crabs, however, he couldn’t take it anymore. “Could I crack one?” he asked.<\/p>\n

“Nah,” his older brother answered without looking up.<\/p>\n

I licked my fingers. “I thought you don’t like crab.”<\/p>\n

“Well,” he said. “I don’t. But I could crack it for you, and you could eat it.”<\/p>\n

“I don’t know.” I broke open a claw and pulled out a big chunk of meat. “The whole point of cracking is so you can eat.”<\/p>\n

“But I can do it for<\/em> you,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Cracking them is fun,” I said.<\/p>\n

“I know! That’s why I want to do it.”<\/p>\n

“But you don’t eat them.”<\/p>\n

He sighed. “Please? Just one?”<\/p>\n

I gave him a crab to crack, and he settled in, handing me the meat as he pried it out. After he was done, I told him to eat some more of his own lunch, and then he could have another.<\/p>\n

The meal progressed in a delicious haze of crab, butter, and garlic. Toward the end, the little guy just couldn’t take it anymore. He touched a piece of crab meat to his tongue experimentally. “Hey,” he said. “I like crab!”<\/p>\n

I laughed. “Me too.”<\/p>\n

“About time,” his brother said.<\/p>\n

Flash forward to today. We’re taking Nana and Grampa out to dinner tonight, to a restaurant that’s famous for ribs. My oldest is excited and looking forward to sharing a rack with me.<\/p>\n

“Can I share, too?” his little brother asked.<\/p>\n

“But you don’t like ribs.”<\/p>\n

He gestured with his hands. “I might now.”<\/p>\n

You know what? I have a feeling he just might.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a big jump from chicken nuggets and buttered noodles to cracking crabs… but it’s totally worth the effort. Just ask my youngest. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,122,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-r3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}