eat pistachios

We went on a grocery run today.  Jeremiah, who is extremely choosy about his food, recoiled when he saw me putting a frozen pizza in the cart.

"Nooooo!" he said.  "Pizza is yucky!"

"Just because you don't like pizza doesn't mean it's yucky," I told him.

"It IS yucky!"

"Well, your dad and I like it."

"Okay, maybe it's not yucky.  But I don't like it because --" and here he rattled off a number of things he disliked about pizza: the taste, the texture, the look, the ingredients.  "All of those things mean I don't want to eat it."

"That's cool," I said.  "And you don't have to eat it.  But I actually like all those things."

He took a moment to process this.  "Then you should buy the pizza," he concluded.  "And enjoy it!  While I eat pistachios."

J tends to assume his subjective experience reflects an objective world revolving around him -- because he's eight.  And yet when challenged, he acknowledges that it's possible to have opinions and personal tastes without condemning everything he doesn't like, and to genuinely respect that what does not work for him might work for someone else just fine.

This is one of many reasons I prefer spending time with my son to spending it on the internet.