I bought all the toddler feeding courses I could find, but it's been liberating to let my child be a picky eater

• As a former food editor, I really wanted my son to be excited about trying new foods.
• After a few family illnesses, I stopped pushing food and allowed him to choose what he wanted.

I always dreamed of being one of those parents who said, "My child loves sushi." As a former food editor, I always thought that my love of food is something that I would be devoted to passing down to my child. Until I had one.

After my son was born in March 2020, we faced our first food-related hurdle when I struggled to breastfeed — though he thrived with supplemental formula. Despite this setback, I still wanted him to be a foodie.

To do this, I followed Instagram accounts like Feeding Littles, Kids Eat in Color, and Solid Starts. I bought the Baby Feeding and Toddler & Kid Feeding courses from Feeding Littles and eyed other courses.

Despite being armed with all of this knowledge, my son became a typical picky toddler. And now I'm letting it happen.

I really wanted my child to be a baby foodie

Before becoming a parent, I scoffed at the "kids' menu" at restaurants. I couldn't understand why parents would sit there eating an expensive meal while their kids ate chicken nuggets.

During pregnancy, I read that taste buds can be influenced by what the pregnant person eats, so I strived to be adventurous in my meals despite struggling with nausea and weird food cravings.

I wanted my baby to be a foodie, so I focused on his early solid-food experiences. When he could start purees, I rushed to Trader Joe's and bought $100 worth of organic produce. He had roasted carrot puree later that night.

Like most babies, he enjoyed everything he tried. Yet after turning a year old, he started to reject things he previously loved. Finally, at 18 months, I realized that his diet was becoming limited.

I have stopped worrying about his picky eating

I worried over his picky eating — like when he threw food on the floor. I kept buying his old favorites but he was now mostly interested in crunchy starches. I blamed myself for not cooking enough, even though being a working mom meant I sometimes had to rely on convenience foods.

Then we got hit with hand, foot, and mouth disease, which can cause sores in the mouth and on the palms of the hands and bottom of the feet. That was quickly followed by RSV, a respiratory virus common in young children.

For the rest of 2021 and early 2022, he came home from day care with a cold or a COVID exposure every other week. After having a mild case of COVID in February, he spent March and April going from one cold to the other — with a handful of ear infections in between.

With the stress of our family getting constantly sick, food was the last thing on my mind. In all of this chaos, I forgot about my son being a foodie and just focused on getting through it.

Most days, I focused on making sure that my son ate and slept. I stopped offering him pricey organic berries and instead bought the things he would consistently consume, which included every crunchy snack from the kids' food aisle.

I let him keep throwing food and helped him look on his "snack" shelf and tell me what he wanted, instead of trying to follow the "division of responsibility" technique pushed by the Instagram children's food experts I follow.

But as a tired pandemic parent, I realized that there are much more important things to focus on than my son being a foodie baby. Instead, I'm focusing on making things easier for all of us. By letting go of my expectations around his eating, I've saved myself a lot of stress.

Ultimately, I've found that a relaxed mom is more valuable to my son than those organic carrots I roasted and pureed for his first meal.