in true first-time parent fashion, we made a few mistakes with carter. one of the biggest was allowing him to choose what he eats at meals. i feel like it started innocently enough when he was a baby and not able to eat the things that we were having. but then it just kept going. not really out of conscious choice even, it was just easy and sort of happened.
fast forward and the kid is now a few months away from being 4 and it's high time he learns to expand his menu. honestly, as a family, we are on the picky side anyways so it's not like the kid is going to be forced to eat outlandish things. we are talking simple things here--tacos, hamburgers, grilled chicken. one of the biggest obstacles we have faced since he started eating food is that he does not like pasta. at all. like none. no macaroni and cheese, no spaghetti, no lasagna, nothing. which does limit us somewhat, but oh well.
so we have started either making him eat what we are having if it is something reasonable that we know he has eaten in the past. i refuse to force him to eat thing that i KNOW he just doesn't like because i had to as a child and well, it's just mean. if it's something we know he doesn't like, like pasta, we will give him 2 choices of alternatives that are also off of his normal menu, but he usually does have to at least try and take one bite of the pasta anyways. if he doesn't eat, then he doesn't eat. and let me tell you, he has not eaten a meal many times in the recent weeks. it's no sweat off my back if i don't have to cook something extra for him anymore. if he wants to go to bed hungry, then so be it. if he chooses not to eat what is offered, he can have water only until he either eats it or it's morning. so there. we are meanies and my child is starving.
side note: one would think that skipping so many meals might reduce one's weight a bit, but that hasn't seemed to be the case for my 51-pound 3 year old :-)
Meh, Cam hasn't eaten more than 3 dinners in the past 3 weeks, so I feel ya. And really, I don't care. He HAS always eaten what we eat, and just suddenly decided he doesn't like any dinner meats, even though he's been eating them for two years. We usually try to make sure there's one thing on his plate that he likes, which is usually the veggie. He typically will still eat his veggie, but sometimes doesn't even want to sit for that. But he knows he won't get anything else until breakfast (and eats a 5-course meal then, lol) and he doesn't ask for anything else, so I guess he's not suffering too much.
ReplyDeleteWe have started a 'one bite' rule, though--he can get down from dinner as long as he's tried one bite of his meat (ahem, the meat he used to eat...grr). The first night he cried and whined about it but since then he takes it like a man. ;)
The only luck we've had: we ate at a restaurant one night, so he had a corn dog; we had a sausage stir-fry that he's always loved, and ate it with no issues; we had tacos, which he normally doesn't care for (has never liked ground beef) but I mixed it in a bowl with shredded cheese and crunched up tortilla chips and he gobbled it down!
we do the same... eat what I make, or don't eat. No skin off my back, I won't be going to bed hungry, lol.
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