Candy Kirby
Food must meet at least one of three important criteria before my daughter will agree to let it pass her lips: 1) It must be packaged in a bag adorned with cartoon characters; and/or 2) It must be drowning in ketchup; and/or 3) It must be ketchup. Seriously, just spoonfuls upon spoonfuls of ketchup.
Some parents buy Happy Meals for their kids at McDonald’s. Suckers. All I have to do is grab a handful of ketchup packets from the condiments bar and yell, “LUNCH IS SERVED!”
If I have the audacity to serve food that does not meet these requirements, my daughter offers any number of excuses for not consuming it — and the less sense they make, the better. It doesn’t matter if she LOVED macaroni last week. Now it’s touching the blue part of her plate; therefore, it is inedible. The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she’s always devoured? Today, “it has bread on it” and you know what that means: SHE WILL NOT TOUCH IT WITH A TEN-FOOT POLE.
Meanwhile, my son will eat her macaroni, bread and ten-foot-pole. Then he’ll ask what the main course is. But that’s another story altogether.
So I asked friends and readers what ridiculous excuses their children, nieces, nephews, cousins, etc. have provided for not eating their otherwise perfectly fine food. Here’s a sampling of what those crazy — er, I mean, creative — kids of yours have come up with (thanks for the laughs, guys!):
10 Ridiculous Excuses Kids Have Given for Not Eating Their Food
#10 – “I can’t eat dinner tonight, because I have to drink my milk. If I have both, I will throw up and since you work way too hard, it’s hard for you to clean up the mess.”
#9 – “I can’t eat vegetables hot.”
#8 – “Vegetables are not for boys.”
#7 – “I can’t, it’s not sausage!”
#6 – “I only like the tree part of the broccoli because it tickles me in my belly. I can’t have the bark part of the broccoli because it gets stuck going down.”
#5 – “When one of my cousins was about 6 years old, she claimed she didn’t want to eat her ice cream because it was too cold.”
#4 – “I won’t eat that mac-n-cheese. Nothing that looks like puke goes in these lips…”
#3 – “My baby sister came up with the family winner for not eating her carrots: ‘If I eat it, what will the starving kids in Africa eat?!”
#2 – 3YO: “Uh-uh. I don’t like it.” ME: “How do you know if you’ve never tried it?” 3YO: “I never tried it because I don’t like it.” ME: Who’s on first? 3YO: Huh?
#1 – “I’m full of my peas, but I’m hungry for Oreos.” (I have to admit, I’ve used this one myself.)
