As most of you know, David is a picky eater, and we have enabled this. Now, John and I are trying to enable eating a wide range of healthy food. We started about a year ago with the no fruit choice night. In our house, you have fruit course before dessert. You don't have to have fruit, but if you don't--no dessert. We started making every other day a no choice fruit night. Rose discovered she despises bananas. There were many tears of self-pity that night. David discovered that he didn't choose most fruits, but he could eat them. He went from one fruit on his list--golden raisins--to being able to eat apples, bananas, watermelon, strawberries, grapes, and pears.

Now, we've started the no choice vegetable night. Every other night, instead of carrots, we put out a new vegetable. So far, he has managed to eat sweet potato, broccoli bottoms, green beans, and cucumbers. I'm not saying he eats a lot of them or he doesn't make a face while he eats them, but he's slowly gaining a repertoire, and, as my friend Deirdre taught me when we went through this with Rose, the life skill of eating foods that aren’t your favorite.