Our preschooler eats anything we call 'rocket food'. My partner thinks it's lying

orchid_bottle_410623 Sept 2026

It started by accident. I was trying to get him to finish his beans after a long shift and said astronauts eat beans before take-off. He ate the whole bowl. Now palak is rocket food, ragi is rocket food, and on a good day so is bitter gourd. My partner isn't comfortable with it. The argument is that we're teaching him to eat for a story rather than because the food is good for him, and that one day he'll find out astronauts don't care about bitter gourd. I think it's harmless, and after a run of nights I'm too tired to negotiate over every spoon. Who's right here? Or are we both a little bit right.

4 comments

rose_moon_572223 Sept 2026
Ours is too small for this yet, so purely curious: does it hold up when he asks a follow-up question? I can picture a four year old asking what else astronauts eat and the whole thing turning into a negotiation of its own.
coral_kite_87223 Sept 2026
We called dosa 'moon' and idli 'clouds' when our son was small. He is eleven now, still uses those names sometimes, and has never shown any sign of feeling tricked. I would say there is a difference between a name and a promise. 'Rocket food' is a name. It would only bother me if it became 'eat this and you will fly'.
- bronze_kettle_451724 Sept 2026
  Fully agree on name vs promise. Our toddler eats 'tiger rice', which is curd rice, and so far nobody has been harmed 😂 Though my partner did catch him roaring at the plate.
- orchid_bottle_410624 Sept 2026
  Replying to @bronze_kettle_4517
  Name versus promise is a useful way to put it. I'll try that on my partner tonight. To be fair, we have drifted into 'you'll be strong like an astronaut' a few times.
silver_drum_639924 Sept 2026
I lean slightly towards your partner. Ours was 'muscle food', and around seven our son started refusing anything that hadn't been given a name. Plain dal became a problem because nobody had labelled it. It sorted itself out, but it took a while.
plum_kettle_342626 Sept 2026
Coming to this late, after a night on call, so I'm sympathetic to the tired-parent argument. What worked for us was letting her name the food herself once she was old enough. She decided methi was 'dinosaur grass', and she was far more loyal to her own names than she ever was to ours.