If You Have a Toddler, These Are the 10 Commandments of Food That You Must Follow

By Alessia Santoro

Updated on 2/15/2018 at 5:05 PM

Flickr user David Goehring
Flickr user David Goehring

Food — perhaps one of the touchiest subjects to the parent of a toddler. One day you kid loves all of the foods, one day they hate certain-shaped foods, and other days they just can't get on board with their plate color, which means the entire meal is ruined. It's an ongoing battle trying to get a toddler to eat regardless of whether they're picky or not — it's just one of those things . . . it's like they make their own rules.

Read through for the food rules — or ten commandments of food, if you will — according to a toddler.

  1. Thou shalt not cut my sandwich into triangles preemptively, even though that's how I always like it. You never know when I'm going to go rogue and want squares.
  2. Thou shalt not dare poke the straw into my juice box. If you do this, I will ask you to get me a fresh one so that I can do it myself, spill it everywhere, and cry about it.
  3. Thou shalt not let anything green touch my other food. I will make you cook me a new meal, and I will throw the green things onto the floor.
  4. Thou shalt not judge my food pairings, no matter how conventionally gross they are. If I want to dip my grapes in mustard, no sensible type of rationalization is going to change my mind. (And I will not tell you that you were right when I then spit the grapes out all over the clean kitchen floor.)
  5. Thou shalt provide me with a snack no matter what time it is, when I've last eaten, or where in the world we are. If you do not have the exact snack that I ask for, when I ask for it, there will be hell to pay in the form of a blood-curdling scream and an on-the-floor, limbs-flying tantrum.
  6. Thou shalt not attempt to hide vegetables inside bites of my macaroni and cheese. I will notice, and I will develop trust issues, thus refusing to eat another bite of anything you prepare for me.
  7. Thou shalt not develop a false sense of security by believing I'll continue to eat my favorite food from day to day. If today's the day I hate pizza — the meal I ate my tiny body's weight in last night — deal with it.
  8. Thou shalt not assume that just because I ask for my milk in the red cup, that I really mean the red cup. I might actually want it in the green cup, but I'm not actually paying attention to you. Basically, read my mind.
  9. Thou shalt accept the fact that if I see something slightly different from usual (read: wrong) with my food — i.e. a burnt corner of my grilled cheese — that the whole meal is ruined. There's no coming back from something like that.
  10. Thou shalt adhere to the binding contract set forward from my birth that any food that sits upon your plate actually belongs to me in every way, shape, and form. Even if it's the exact same meal. Oh, and it doesn't work the other way around, either — my plate is mine, too.

May the odds be ever in your favor (but probably not).

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