So I am pretty sure I have just traumatized my child for lfe.
A bit of background…We currently live in Texas, are vegetarians (rather, hubby and I are veggie, A is daughter of veggie parents!), and have a fairly healthy eating style. A is allergic to Milk and eggs, so this makes for extremely challenging dinners!
So we went back to the UK for Christmas as usual, but this is the first year that kiddo was really eating food. (She just turned 2 in Dec!). I did think the transition might be a bit difficult (we go for a month), so I made sure to take plenty of the kiddie snacks she is used to, but didn’t worry too much because she adores fresh fruit and veg.
Long story very short, A pretty much refused to eat over there. If you have not traveled between the countries, EVERYTHING tastes different in the UK, even things that are exactly the same Brand Name- Like Ritz crackers, Campbell’s Tomato Soup, you name it. She started saying, “Something to EAT!”, but when we gave her something, she didn’t actually eat it…I didn’t worry too much about it because she has been working on getting her upper and lower molars and goes through stages such as this. :wub:
It got so bad that I even gave her back a bottle of milk substitute at nap time and bedtime because I could tell she was losing weight…
In addition, she has been going through some strange, unidentified food allergies…nothing life threatening, but Culminating on Xmas morning when she helped herself to a bit of chocolate sweetie that had been left on a table…hives on her face, vomiting, and serious irritability later, she and I ended up missing dinner, staying home in bed, and rearranging airplane tickets to come home early…
So another horrible, 24 hours of travel later, and we arrive back home…I kid you not. The first thing my toddler did was race to the pantry, throw open the door, wave her arm and shout,“awl the FOOD!”. For a week straight we humored her demands for snacks, of which she would eat only a bit, before wanting another…I thought she just missed her favorites!
So we return to gymnastics class, and my kid starts chasing the other kids around, shouting “needs something to EAT!”. :blink: Huh? She did this until we assured her that their mommies/daddies would
get them some food if they were hungry… Now all the animals we see, even birds in the sky, are apparently hungry!!!
I now think that she didn’t realize that the food she was used to doesn’t exist in the UK, despite my
explanations…so she just thought that WE WEREN’T FEEDING HER!! Wow. How tiny do I feel…Forget EL, forget about my plans of exposing her to different cultures… (we also went to Scotland, Wales, and Paris!). All my poor kid is going to remember is that her parents took her on a trip and didn’t feed her… Like I said, years of therapy… 
Have any of you been through anything remotely similar? I have no idea how to make her understand…She fell in Absolute Lust with Chocolate Buttons in the UK, (she doesnt get much candy at home, but mommy was a bit worried about eating over there :yes: Nothing like starting up a good set of bad habits! hhmm, Galaxy, hhhhhhhmmmm.) we don’t get them here, so I have used this as an example, but…
Anybody else have a story or suggestion that I’ll make me feel like I am not the only parent to inflict permanent damage on their poor children? lol
Texas is MASSIVE! We finally purchased a mammoth-sized deep-freezer so that we can accommodate a lot of frozen foods like Quorn products…luckily, we do have a local farmers market here in town to supply produce, but…it is just me or have other people familiar with UK produce noticed that even fruits and vegetables taste different here???