To Chefector:

I hated spicy food as a kid. When I was in high school, and became dissatisfied with the long list of too-spicy foods that were unavailable to me, I made a plan to fix that. Every time I ordered a meal with a spicy option, I ordered it one click spicier than I actually liked it, then just forced it down. After a year or two, my spiciness baseline increased appreciably, and today I demand a moderate amount of heat in any appropriate dish. I’m glad put in the effort, and now have new foods and new dimensions of various dishes to enjoy.

Now that I cook for my own kids (aged 5-12), I want to help them get over that same hump. So, for each meal, I prepare the food a tad spicier than they would like. In practice, this means I put about a quarter of the cayenne, red pepper, or other heat source called for by a normal recipe into the pot. But even this very moderate amount of heat is always received with immense grief, causing meal time to be generally unenjoyable for everyone. This is all in addition to the usual misery involved in trying to get kids to eat any vegetables. I keep telling myself that it’ll be worth it, and we will all be able to happily eat a meal out of the same pot in the near future. But part of me thinks that forcing your kids to eat their vegetables is a good and righteous fight because there are tangible health benefits to vegetable eating, whereas spiciness is a matter of taste, and I shouldn’t subject all of us to additional misery just to force my tastes on my kids. So, what do you think: keep trying to get my kids to enjoy some heat in the food, or just allow the kids to discover an appreciation for spicy foods outside of my kitchen?

--Elliott

So, this is a type of (generally) well-intentioned thing that parents often do with/to their kids, usually with stuff like church, or a sport you really want them to like, or giving Aunt Susan a kiss when she comes over, or whatever: Give the kids basically no choice in the matter, in hopes that if that thing is just a normal part of daily life for them, they will not grow to have an aversion to it. I've made fitful efforts along these lines myself, sometimes only belatedly recognizing that I'd been doing it at all; often, I think, we parents slip into this mode without thinking about it at all.

Elliott, I submit to you that the impulse to introduce your kids to spicy food this way indicates—rightly or wrongly!—something important about how you yourself view spiciness: That it is not something yummy and good, to the delights of which one can be awakened, thereby making one's life richer and more fulfilling, but rather something bad and unpleasant, to the miseries of which one must be desensitized, thereby making one passably Normal. That what's natural is for a person to be averse to spiciness, unless one swims upstream against that nature for the sake of not being excluded from normal restaurant experiences. That is the basic idea you are conveying to your kids—not on purpose!—through this method, and they are picking up on it. After all, if spicy food were good, all on its own, no one would need to force it on them. Hell, if it were that good, you'd be hoarding it all for yourself!

But like, who cares. Maybe they won't like spicy food! The more worrisome thing they can learn from this is that their parent will force them through unpleasant-bordering-on-painful experiences in service to an abstract idea evidently more important than the discomfort it's causing them. That's bad. That's not what you want your kids to learn.

The basic rubric, as I have learned through humbling trial and error, is this: The things you make your kids do even when they have no interest in doing them are the things your kids will associate with arbitrary, unfair rules and the feeling of powerlessness; they are the things your kids will grow to regard as chores, and will hate doing. The things you help them discover and enjoy through their own natural curiosity, or hunger, or impulse to share good times with you are the things they will love.

The advantage you have, as the parent, is that kids get bored, or hungry, and don't have all that much agency in deciding what to do about it. The things you make conveniently available to them to address those feelings are things they will come to have good relationships with. If, when they are bored or looking for some imaginative outlet, the easiest and most available form of entertainment is a good age-appropriate book, they will read the book, and the book will light up their brain like a pinball machine, and that will be thrilling and intensely rewarding, and will help them learn to like reading. Repeat this enough times and they will make a habit of reading; reading will be what they like to do to light up their brain. If, when they are hungry—not when It Is Mealtime Now, but when they are actually hungry—what satisfies that hunger is a plate of fresh crunchy veggies, eating the fresh crunchy veggies will feel very good, immediately, and will make them very happy; if they get used to that experience of eating vegetables, they will like to eat vegetables.

This applies to spicy food—within reason, of course: A chemical burn is a chemical burn, and ghost peppers at any level of hunger will simply traumatize a child—but also to mushrooms and to mayonnaise and to raw fish and to pretty much all the other foods that people sometimes get all the way into adulthood fearing. Kids who grow up refreshing themselves on brutally hot days by licking frosty durian popsicles will like the taste of durian. That's really all there is to it. In this one way if in no others, we humans are not very complicated.

So here is what I think you should do. First of all, you should say to your kids (editing as needed to suit however old they are): "I'm sorry for making the food spicier than you like it. I was hoping you would like spicy food as much as I do, but I got too excited thinking I could make it happen and it was a mistake. Everybody is different and it's OK if you don't like spicy food at all; I won't make you eat anything spicier than you like anymore. And if you ever do decide that you would like to try out some spicy stuff, I'd love it if we could do that together!" The thing to convey (other than that you're sorry for having forced them to eat food that made them feel bad) is that you're not going to put any pressure on them; that it's OK for them to like what they like and to try new things at their own pace.

And then, go right on enjoying spicy food in front of them. Hose your dinner down with hot sauce. When you're at a restaurant where everybody can order a different dish, order something spicy—better yet, ask the server to identify the spiciest thing on the menu, and order it—and enjoy the hell out of eating it. Not out of some strategic motive, but because you like spicy food and it's what you want to eat. There's a very good chance that at some point their natural curiosity will start itching at them: Spicy food will start to look exciting and appealing and they'll at least want to try it. And then you can help them take some steps in that direction, always with the assurance that if it's not for them, it won't make you feel any type of way other than glad to have been able to go exploring together.

Because ultimately, who gives a frig! It's totally fine if they never come around on spicy heat. People have much dumber food aversions than that.

Source: How To Help Your Kids Learn To Like A Food