Lesson Learned: The Tomato Boy
"We had one little boy who came here a while ago and his mother said, 'He won't eat vegetables. Don't even try and make him eat vegetables,'" begins Margaret Kelly of St. Alban's Daycare in Burnaby. "We said that's fine; we put vegetables on the table every day and if he doesn't want them, he doesn't have to eat them."
And that was how things went until the garden began to grow. Like many daycares, St. Alban's has a garden and the children water the plants and keep track of the progress. The little boy who didn't like vegetables was particularly interested. He would be out there every day looking at the plants and even smelling them.
One day, one of the children noticed that some of the tomatoes had disappeared over night. There had been 20 and now there were only 16. "Nobody knew where they had gone, but one of my staffers decided to keep an eye out," remembers Kelly.
The next day, she noticed that the little boy who didn't like vegetables was out in the garden. "When she comes out, he has one in his mouth and his wee cheek is out like a little chipmunk."
An interesting, although initially one-sided, conversation followed. The little boy eager to keep his secret confined himself to nods and shakes of the head, until the adult said, "Those tomatoes are still green; they'll taste much better when they are red."
"That was too much for him," says Kelly. "It came spluttering out, 'No the green ones are good, too.'"
"Ever since then, he has loved tomatoes. When children become involved with something from the beginning, they want to be involved all the way through."
"Next, we are going to try growing carrots."