Hey son, would you like nachos for lunch?
YES! I LOVE NACHOS! NACHOS NACHOS NACHOS!
OK, here ya go!
DADDY? WHERE’S THE BEEF?
Those are chicken nachos! Grilled and diced chicken on huge tortilla chips, mild salsa just like you love, and a melted Mexican four-cheese topping.
DADDY I HATE CHICKEN NACHOS!
Well I don’t blame you, kiddo.
YOU DON’T?
No way. That chicken… it has bugs in it.
BUGS, DADDY? WHERE ARE THE BUGS?
Right there, see where I’m pointing? That little sliver of white is a nasty bug. Don’t eat these nachos, OK?
DADDY I WANNA TRY EM!
No. Don’t eat the chicken nachos.
DADDY DADDY DADDY I WANNA TRY EM!
No sir. No bugs for you. Gimme that plate, please.
THESE ARE MY NACHOS DADDY! I LOVE CHICKEN NACHOS WITH BUGS!
Let me see you eat one, then, you’re so brave.
(MUNCH, and a very smug full-of-food face back at me.)
Well kiddo, I guess you do like chicken nachos.
DADDY I LOVE CHICKEN NACHOS!!
What do you say?
THANK YOU, DADDY. MAY I HAVE SOME MILK, PLEASE?
(MUNCH!)
This should be on itmademyday.com
xD
it totally made mine.
Haha! Best way to get a little kid to try something new. You are a genius, Daniel. And just think, when he is too old for things like the above… you will have proof that it did work at one point in the past.
Totally wouldn’t of worked on me as a kid… How does he go from not liking nachos to liking nachos with bugs on it?
Nice!
There’s a Calvin and Hobbes strip that does much the same thing, but the Dad gets so grossed out that HE doesn’t want to eat it.
Hahaha!
Slugs.. Odin likes slugs… can’t get him to eat something, point out the slugs..
Olives = slugs
Anchovies = slugs
He wouldn’t eat a chicken meatball sandwich the other day… Until I made him help me squash the meatballs…
Chicken meatball sandwich = bad
Squashed meatball sandwich = give me moew
Oh man does that bring back memories. Calling the food something else was the ONLY way to get my daughter and her three friends to eat when they were kindergarten age. Let’s see, you can have lice and spider legs, brains and roadkill, zombie ears and chicken tongues. As long as it was weird sounding, they ate it. I also found that butchering the real name helped, too. I still call those round meat creations, “meatbulbs”. You have an advantage. You have WOW creature parts to fall back on.
Too cute.
But just wait until he tries the reverse psychology on you.
It’s coming
Something tells me this was used on Daniel when he was a child. Grandma BRK did a fine job raising you, and you are passing along her tricks of the trade. Am I right?
Bugs in food? Makes perfect sense to me!
I can still recall the expression of the true connoisseur on my small daughter’s face as she described the different nuances of flavor she’d noticed while sampling … ants …
How I survived til she made it to adulthood, I’ll never really know.
Masterly done, my friend. Just wait til he goes to school and proudly tells the teacher his dad cooks him bugs to eat. o.O
-Del
Your son yelled “WHERE’S THE BEEF?” in context.
I think the Internet is proud of him.
ROFLMAO, I don’t think the bug trick would work with my girl though.
Definitely a Calvin that you’re raising there. Thankfully, I don’t have to resort to the whole “bug-in-food” thing for my son…he hates bugs and would eat even less…plus he wouldn’t believe me lol
Enjoy it while you can, my friend. They go so quickly from eating bug-infested nachos to asking to borrow the car and asking for a curfew extension and an advance on allowance.
I just went on a college visit with my oldest. Since he’s a step-kid, I don’t have memories of him as a baby, but it seems like yesterday we were going to check out middle school for the first time.
While I don’t in any way miss the diapers and a million other things about having young kids, and I do enjoy the freedom that comes from having kids who don’t need a babysitter, the innocence is something that can’t be replaced. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
Not to judge, it’s a personal thing. I don’t lie about what food is to my son (6 y.o.). My mom lied to me that steamed cauliflower was potatoes when I was about that age and when I found out i made me really upset.
I try to get him to try new things, he’s pretty good about it because I’ll remind him of something that he really likes but wasn’t sure to try it. He will eat soft tacos, but often he’d just eat the bottom part where the meat and cheese is and leave the rest. So I changed plans and now I help him make himself burritos (really just the same thing just rolled up) and he eats all of it.
Our next food adventure – Kool Aid pickles.
Hee hee!
I was going to remind you of the C&H reference, too… but as someone who may have named a certain cat, Hobbes, I’m sure that you already knew that!
Daniel,
I Just tried your “technique” on my 5 year old. He didn’t think chicken should be in a Grilled Cheese sandwich. Does this only work for chicken? Need more great fathering tools keep ‘em commin!
Once again Daniel, a delight to read! You really do have a way of brightening everyone’s day with your family and personal antics, and your writing style is always fab
Keep up the good work 
‘Java (Daniel also)
My wife has a 7 year old little (oops) brother. He was up visiting us for a few days. I was watching him while my wife was at work and he got hungry (apparently kids do that around noon). We settled on Peanut Butter and Jelly. I made him a sandwich and handed it to him on a plate. He looked up at me and we had the following talk.
Him: You need to cut off the crust, I don’t eat the crust.
Me: I already knew that, so this week when I got groceries I bought a special kind of bread. This kind does not have a crust like you don’t like, the crust is made out of the same stuff as the rest of the bread. It is only brown so you know where the edge is.
He ate the whole sandwich, and another the next day without complaint. The day after he went home I got a call from my mother in law wanting to know what the “special bread” I got was. She laughed so hard she dropped the phone.
When my son was about 3-4 (18 and in college now), we were at the grocery store. He was in his usual perch on my shoulders so that i could keep his fingers out of everything and we were about to check out. He was asking for candy and other assorted goodies, however we were running short on funds as it was. I calmly explained to him that i didn’t have enough money for us to buy candy and that we needed it for food. He thought on this for a minute, and then asked in his small plaintive voice, “Well, can’t we buy some money?” That proceeded to overload the awwwwww meter of everyone nearby and when we checked out, the girl at the register slipped him a roll of Life-Savers.
As a girl I must confess that my first thought was, “Oh, that is gross.” This was quickly followed by the mom in me debating what nasty creature I’m going to tell my son is in his green beans tonight. He’s really into crickets and spiders lately….
lol, very cute and I guess I’d miss those little things as well
I wish this worked with my boys. lol
So I went over to my favorite mex restaurant and I had to order the nachos. It was like some larval worm that had been gestating inside my brain, planted there by your story, had finally grown and burst into full on craving.
I had them put extra grasshoppers on mine.
This is quite possibly the most hilariously awesome blog post I’ve ever read. XD
Continue to keep up the excellent work!
I will bookmark your site.