Never did I expect a tiny little sea creature to give me a valuable reminder about being a good mama. When my oldest was about two, we had salmon for dinner and he ended up getting really sick that night. I truly don’t think it was at all related to the salmon we had (dang daycare germs!), but he had a taste aversion to fish ever since. We LOVE seafood in our house and I cook it a lot, but it wasn’t something I was going to push on him, in hopes that he’d come around again one day. Whenever we made fish, it was the ONLY time I prepared a separate entree for the kiddos at home.
Fast forward a few years and we were celebrating my son’s fifth birthday in California. My husband and I have a favorite oceanside lunch spot for fresh-fish sandwiches. We were standing in line to place our order when the fresh mussels in the display case caught my son’s eye. He had just read all about mussels in one of his books and he was so excited to see them. “Mom, can I have mussels for lunch?!”
I looked at him, and immediately, I almost responded, “but you don’t like seafood.”. But I am so, grateful that at that moment I paused and I at least just said, “you… want mussels for lunch?” I asked the teenager working behind the counter how much the mussels were. $13/pound. Confused, my husband and I both kind of shrugged and added a pound of mussels to our order. We went home to eat our lunch, and I’ll be darned — our son ate all of them.
This was a valuable teaching moment for myself and my husband because we almost put our son into a box. We almost give him a label by telling him that he doesn’t like seafood. Kids change. Their interests, their tastes, and everything else are constantly changing. But that’s for them to discover, and for me to support their curiosity!
