What to Do When Your 405-Month-Old Suddenly Refuses to Cook
A helpful guide for breaking frustrating eating habits!
It’s inevitable. After months of healthy habits, your 405-month-old has fallen into an impossible food rut. Getting her to make anything in the refrigerator feels like torture, and her once varied diet now consists of the same three zero-effort comfort meals eaten in front of a screen. But fear not! There’s hope for even the most food-averse eater. With a few simple approaches and adjustments, mealtime doesn’t have to be a struggle anymore.
Make Her Part of the Cooking Process!
Let her play chef for the day! Even though she can’t quite safely navigate actual cooking herself, there are convenient “kits” designed just for your 405-month-old’s developmental needs. With safe, pre-cut and pre-measured ingredients and cute little drawings of peppers to show her how spicy (!) everything is, she’ll be having so much messy fun she’ll forget she’s not eating frozen dumplings or pasta with olive oil and nothing else!
Use a Chart!
Show her a spreadsheet with the amount of money she spends on takeout and delivery in a given week. Then a given month. She might get emotional at first, but once she calms down, help her articulate her big feelings as she comes to the realization it’s just not financially feasible to be this lazy.
No Screens at Mealtime!
With just a few swipes of her thumb, your 405-month-old can be pulled right back into her pad see ew/vegan ramen/tacos behavioral pattern. It may sound impossible now, but the only way to truly break the habit is to take the screen away from mealtime. When it’s not available, she’ll be frantic at first, but eventually she’ll be hungry enough that she’ll try to put things in a bowl and eat them. Even if it’s just a few bites, eating any food that originated from inside the house a huge breakthrough!
Ditch the Guilt!
We all know she meant well when she picked up a bag of lettuce at the grocery store in addition to the barely edible frozen cauliflower gnocchi she bought, but watching the leaves turn brown in the crisper drawer week after week is only reinforcing her bad habits. Eliminate “failure” from the equation by quietly cleaning out the fridge before your 405-month-old gets ready for mealtime. If the only thing in there is a stick of butter, some dill, a half a lemon and a salmon filet, she might get the idea to cook all on her own!
Embrace Peer Influence
Nothing makes your 405-month-old behave herself like the presence of others her own age. Invite people over for dinner and watch her succumb to the sheer pressure of having to act like a completely different person to convince her dear friends that she’s a functioning human! As soon as she gets an RSVP your little Alison Roman will be reaching for the fancy blue Dutch oven she bought on sale because she envisioned herself making some kind of “stewed meat” after seeing a targeted ad on Instagram. Bon appetit!
Aw, look at you being all Betty Crocker ‘n shit. Good on yez. Stick with the tough love. Your 405 month old may still skimp on the cooking, but at least you’ll have given her something she can discuss with her therapist. I’m sorry to say my 924 month old is lazy and truculent. If there is cheese and gluten-free seed crackers in the house, she believes she has hit the gourmet menu jackpot. Throw in a couple of cookies, and that’s the 4 four food groups. Seeds count as veggies. The old toddler actually does know how to cook healthful meals. In fact, she cooks up very healthy food about every 5 or 6 days. She puts 3 lbs hamburger or chicken, 30 oz. green peas, 16 oz. raw matchstick carrots, a cup of frozen spinach, 1/2 c. minced parsley, and 1.5 cups fresh sliced apples or blueberries in the Insta Pot and cooks it for 35 minutes. While that’s cooking, she puts 3 cups brown rice in the rice cooker, and cooks it. When both pots of food are ready and cooled enough, she puts all of it in a huge bowl and mixes it together. Then she feeds it to her dogs twice a day. She hasn’t figured out yet an easy way to make cat food or she would. On rare occasions she digs around in the freezer and cooks an actual, healthy meal. Or at least, maybe adjacent to healthy. So, provided your 405 month old has the constitution of a recalcitrant jack ass and the genetics of people who live into their 100 and are immune to COVID, German Measles, and other nasty things, which I do and am, she should live long and prosper.