I've been trying to avoid this, as current advice seems to suggest that it turns the main course into an ordeal to be got through and doesn't promote good eating habits or a healthy attitude towards food.
However, 3yo DS1's diet is shit. He eats minute portions of beige food, no matter how much choice I give him and bend over backwards to be totally relaxed about the whole thing. Everything I present, is met with, 'That's dis-CUS-tin!' to which I breezily reply, 'That's OK, you don't have to eat it, but I'm not making anything else.' I've never bargained with him about food, never force him to sit at the table, never lose my temper at his repeated food-refusal, give him a choice wherever I can, although this is not always possible. I involve him in food preparation wherever safe, get him to pick out fruit and veg at the supermarket which he loves doing, and let him cut and smell herbs in the garden. However, the only way he'll eat veg is on pizza (on the rare occasion he doesn't pick it off) or sometimes in pesto, so I blitz in anything I can get in there. I have slightly more luck with fruit, but pretty much only bananas, grapes and strawberries.
Tonight, after a day of watching him pick at crap (one spoon of porridge, half a slice of ham, a quarter of a bread roll, accompanying fruit and tomatoes thrown in the floor, pack of Pombears and a cookie devoured entirely), I broke my own rule at dinner when he stropped off to the couch, proclaiming my cheese and green veg pie to be 'howibble' (without tasting it). I said he wouldn't get any ice-cream unless he ate three bites of the pie. After half an hour of fury, he finally gagged down the required amount of pie in a rage and we had our once a week ice cream treat.
This is probably the most veg I have got into him in about forever. If I had no ice-cream to dangle, he just wouldn't have eaten it at all and not been any the worse for it.
Which is the lesser of two evils? Using a desirable food to encourage consumption of the undesirable food in the hope that he'll develop a taste for the undesirable? Or him leading a life nutrient-free until my carefree and relaxed facade crumbles into a heap convinces him that vegetables are actually quite pleasant?
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Behaviour/development
Talk to me about, 'No pudding until you've eaten your mains.'
59 replies
ElphabaTheGreen · 29/08/2015 22:15
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