Manners and eating

[globalnomad]

my parents knew which dishes we children hated; we had to eat everything except those very limited number of dishes which just did not want to go down - and that rule applied at home and away. so in those rare instances my parents would have had to do the explaining, but we children felt too embarrassed and did not want to upset the cook.
in my upbringing of my kids in this asian environment, things can not be applied in the same way; it is at times extremely difficult to find anything palatable at all, so its turns out to be a matter of life and death.