Were I to pitch a cookbook, it would be this: healthy, easy toddler meals that take less than 20 minutes, for busy, tired parents who can’t be arsed. It wouldn’t be shiny or contain aspirational photographs of me, smiling with all my teeth as I one-handedly stir a laborious risotto while clutching a cherubic, catalogue-perfect baby, alongside scaremongery copy about baby food pouches. No, it would be written in bullet points of a paragraph or less, with no frills at all. The recipes would read like this:
Haddock risotto: 1) Boil egg. 2) Dot frozen haddock fillet with butter; microwave for 2½ mins. 3) Microwave 1/3 pack basmati rice for 1½ mins. 4) Microwave peas with water for 4 mins. 5) Make cheese sauce. 6) Mix it all together.
It would also contain the sort of politically incorrect tips for getting your child to eat that would have the baby food influencers of Instagram phoning social services. Tips such as: put Postman Pat on and try again (thanks, mother-in-law!), mix in an Ella’s Kitchen food pouch with the food they’re refusing (sister-in-law), and add butter to the puree (a reader to whom I owe many peaceful nights).
I don’t think it would sell much, because anyone who values their sanity is already doing some version of these things. Mealtimes with toddlers are stressful enough. The rise of the microwave – and therefore obesity – is often blamed on feminism. All those busy working mothers who stopped putting their families first by sweating over a stove for hours! But a microwave doesn’t necessarily mean ready meals, as anyone who has looked at a 1970s microwave cookbook will tell you. You can make a surprising number of things in a microwave (whole sides of salmon! – the mind boggles). When a friend with two young children said she didn’t have one, I asked her – once I had stopped screaming – how she survived. Every couple of months I make a slow-cook tomato and basil sauce and freeze the lot for defrosting in the microwave, and that has genuinely saved me.
I’m a bad mother, probably, because current parenting fashion dictates that I’m supposed to be feeding my boy exactly what we eat, instead of yesterday’s reheated pasta from the pub. Often I do, but last night we had samphire because I fancied something extremely high in sodium, just as sometimes you want a curry that can blow your head off, not another creamy baby one.
Sometimes, also, I would like to eat dinner at a normal hour. Frequently, that bit in Seinfeld about the early bird special pops into my mind (“It’s 4:30.” “Who eats dinner at 4:30?” “By the time we sit down it’ll be quarter to five”). I would also like time in which to eat it. My book would include a whole section on indigestion, and also tips on how to maximise cooking for your family as the only break you’ll get that day (wine, Bruce Springsteen).
Here in north London, my husband and I make most of our meals from scratch, but I still find other parents quite judgy. My Welsh friends don’t seem to have as many hangups about feeding their babies ready-made banana porridge. Just the other day, another mother told me, in horrified tones, that her parents used to just blitz up whatever they were eating for dinner and feed it to them. Her baby was gummily mouthing a radicchio leaf at the time, but I couldn’t work out what the problem was. You mean you don’t just put the chicken cacciatore in the blender? Doesn’t everyone do that?
I had obviously forgotten about the baby-led-weaning orthodoxy, having blanked the annoying weaning months from my memory (I hated being made to feel that I was a bad mother for not making veggie muffins). I spoonfed my child and, despite my being told this would make him a picky eater, he will now eat anything, even things I couldn’t stomach until I was an adult: olives, anchovies and baba ganoush with so much garlic it walked before he did. And now that he eats anything, the time spent making muffins feels more worth it. There is great pleasure to be had in watching your child enjoy something you’ve lovingly prepared.
I’m not smug, though, because I know that there will come a day when he will only want chicken nuggets and chips, and it will be absolutely no reflection on me. It’s normal to link your identity to food – it says so much about who we are, our culture and our values – but when it comes to parenting, the competitiveness can be next level. It all just seems so pointless, when you can do everything by the book and still end up with a picky eater. Children are very much themselves, and if they don’t want to eat the sweet potato falafel, they are not going to eat it; people who boast “mine eat what they’re given or they’ll starve” fail to understand this.
You have to do what you can to get by, and everything else is just noise. Mealtimes can be taxing enough without looking at other parents askance for how they choose to do it. My brother is autistic and never liked sitting at the table. Instead of forcing him, my mother simply let him wander in and out, picking at what he wanted on the plate. Why make life more difficult for everyone?
My toddler is going through a phase of being very suspicious of the first mouthful of any food he is presented with, as though he is a medieval king who has heard rumours of a poisoning plot. I, his lowly jester, must therefore perform the dance of the seven spoons, which involves trying to put the spoon in his mouth (he still loves to be fed – my fault for not doing BLW) while he knocks it out of my hand. I get another spoon. He flails wildly until the exact moment when the food touches his lips, at which point he waves it in like he’s an air traffic controller. Mmm yes, more of that. It’s a fun game for us both. No doubt there will be many more fun games to come, which is why there would also be a chapter on stain removal.
What’s working
I wanted to pay tribute publicly to Vicky Arlidge, whose music I discovered when looking for nursery rhymes on Spotify that were sung in a British accent. She has a lovely voice and her renditions have a folky, traditional style, which means they are much more pleasant for adults. My son loves drifting off to sleep to them. Thank you, Vicky.
What’s not
The Elf on the Shelf. A friend failed to consider that her three-year-old might be alarmed at the prospect of a toy becoming sentient at night. Her daughter was highly concerned and insisted on laying down some ground rules. “Dear Elf,” their letter reads, “Here are some rules. You are not allowed to scare me. You have to stay downstairs and not come to my room. Also, don’t touch me.” “I’m considering just burning the thing ceremonially,” my friend says.
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
