There have been so many things that I have said that I would never do like my mom over my life. Some of them have held true, but many of them fell by the wayside when I had children, and saw that sometimes, just maybe, her approach might work. I’ll deny that I do it, but do it anyways. I am very certain that these last few nights at dinner have been quite unlike anything that she ever did with my siblings and I growing up.
Woo and Goose are generally good eaters, but they like to direct how and when they will eat certain foods. Unless we offer pasta or smoked salmon. Then they will eat more than we could ever dream of making. If they balk at what we offer, we ask them to try, and failing that, we let them pass on certain things. I wouldn’t like it if someone was telling me what I had to eat at many meals. Actually, that is why I cook, so I can tell everyone else what to eat!
We do monitor what they snub, and take steps to correct if we notice that they have gone, lets say a month a few days or so, without eating meat or fruit. Lately it has been veggies, and both are on strike. They pick everything out, even the stuff that they love. So we need to get creative.
We were eating broccoli earlier this week and I got Goose to start talking with a bunch of broccoli sticking out of her mouth, replacing her teeth. She giggled and giggled and when asked, sucked the broccoli in and CHOMPED! it. We tried again, and Willy and Woo joined in. All of us talking and laughing, and then CHOMP!, eating our broccoli. All at the same time. A whole head of broccoli disappeared in moments!
My mom would be scandalized. It worked again tonight, so I am willing to live with a little bit of talking with your mouth full and chewing with the mouth open if the veggies go in without a fight!
My little guy is starting to push away veggies too…I might just have to steal your idea!
good luck! It’s very much in the “works this week” category! And so far, it doesn’t work on cauliflower :).
I often get the kids to pretend they are giants and are gobbling down the mini broccoli forest! Or, I pretend their food is saying ‘don’t eat me don’t eat me’, let me tell you they sure eat it fast!
The one thing I swore I would never do, that my mother does, was to follow my kids around with a plate. She used to bring my younger brother his dinner upstairs when he refused to pull himself away from video games. It would make me crazy. But now, when my son throws a fit and ends up leaving the table, I’ll sit there next to him feeding him on the couch, thinking ‘I swore I would NEVER do this.’
SO glad that I am not the only one. There is a whole list of things, truth be told 🙂
We also dip the broccoli in Parmesan, so they eat the snow covered trees. That also works.