Thursday, February 4, 2010

Food Battles

So at my house i have two very different eaters. Boy #1 has 6, maybe 7 meals that are the only meals that he will EVER eat. Most of those meals have the word Cheese in the title. Then i have boy #2 who will eat almost anything that is placed in front of him, veggies included.
Now i do understand that kids go through different cycles of what they like to eat and how much they eat at any given time. Boy #2 is getting older he is realizing that i make a separate dinner for his brother. He starting to give us dirty looks when he realizes that big bro gets to eat chicken nuggets for dinner and he is stuck with whatever is on mom and dad's plate. So this brings us to what has been going on at our house up until Sunday night. Sunday the hubster decided that enough was enough and while we are still going to continue to make a separate dinner for boy #1, he was going to have at least one bite of whatever the rest of us were eating that night. I knew this was going to be a uphill battle and wow that first night it was, this is what i sat across the table from......
There were many, many tears shed that night and not tears over having to try something as out of the ordinary as broccoli.......

but these were tears shed over one tiny,tiny bite of a hot dog. I told you he was picky.....We told him that he had to eat a bite of hot dog before he could leave the table. It took him about 45 min to finally do it and then was so worked up when he went to swallow it that he made himself throw up. We ended up taking baths early and then it was off to bed. FAILURE!

Because of his picky, absolutely no vegetable diet i recently put him on the kids Juice Plus gummies. They are a full daily dose of fruits and vegetables. Since i have put him on these his(pardon my too much info here) poo poo problems have all but disappeared, it's wonderful and honestly a real answer to our prayers. My kids race each other when i tell them it's time for their Juice Plus.
On Monday night we had Lasagna and i could just feel a fight coming on. Me and the hub were ready, one of us more than the other but never the less we were ready to take the little man on. He wined and sat for quite a while saying that he was not eating it. We then gave him a choice between a noodle of Lasagna, a green bean, and a bite of corn. It was totally up to him. He seemed a bit calmer when he was given the choice to decide what his fate was to be.....

It took a while, not nearly as long as the previous night, but he ate the noodle and smiled and said that it tasted good. He then proceeded to jump and dance with joy because he had "DONE IT". It was a small victory for us all but it's the small ones that matter. The rest of the week i was met with a more willing 5 year old as long as he was given a couple choices, like last night he chose to eat a couple of pieces of lettuce very willingly, this was big people. Hopefully we are well on our way to trying new things with less and less whining along the way. If any of you have any tricks you use at home i would love to hear them.....
I am adding a link to Or So She Says HERE, there was a great guest post today about kids nutrition.

3 comments:

  1. That's what we do with Abby. We make her try whatever is on her plate. If she doesn't like it she doesn't have to eat it. Our mentality is food is food, don't eat it if you don't like it but you don't get anything else. (thanks super nanny). So now she eats when she is hungry and won't when she isn't. Arey is like Jake still, she loves veggies and good food and has always loved it since she was a baby. Maybe it is a second child thing...

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  2. Hey Jaime
    I give my boys Carnation Instant Breakfast every day. I have a friend who is a nutritionist and she told me to do that. They dont eat very well either but I usually only feed them what the family is eating. I have noticed that the more butter I put on veges the better they eat them I know it kind of defeats the purpose but it works. Their favorite is honey carrots. Just cook carrots and put some honey some butter and a little brown sugar and they are pretty good. I usually just buy frozen because they are so much easier. Where do you find your juice plus gummies?

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  3. I realized that i forgot to link to the Juice Plus website so i went back into the article and linked, you just have to click on the words Juice Plus. My neighbor sells it too so if you want more info i can get you info on them.
    I know i should have made him eat what we eat a long time ago, i'm a looser. He's doing better on trying things so i just happy about that.

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