The first thing I decided to do for my picky eaters was take away their snacks. I'm not talking about starving them, but they really don't NEED cheerios on the ride home from preschool. Besides, lunch is made as soon as we get home. They don't need to eat pretzels and goldfish in our living room, casually munching all afternoon long. They'd be snacking up until dinner. Surprise surprise, they weren't hungry for dinner. So, I did the unthinkable with a 3 year old and 2 year old.
Day 1 was met with whining almost nonstop, all day long. "Mama, I want goooooooldfiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish" "I neeeeeeeeeed pretzels" and my favorite "I'm huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuungry" which was uttered only 5 minutes after finishing lunch assuring me she was full. By the time dinnertime rolled around, I was in full 'ignore the whine' mode. I made an easy and simple dinner that I KNEW they both liked. Oh, yea, that worked well.
Bean Sprout happily devoured her entire dinner. I was thrilled. She was then allowed to eat her biscuits since she finished her dinner. Peanut yelled and screamed at me.. for an hour. My favorite line from the night was she wouldn't eat dinner because she was hungry. I wish I could make this up. She finally ate maybe a quarter of her dinner. With that much eaten, she happily looked at me and asked for her biscuit. The response was a big fat NO. Que the waterworks. I simply ignored her and took her food away. We did our typical bath and bedtime routine. Peanut begged for snacks, but I responded by saying that she had her chance to eat her dinner and she choose not to. There would be no snacks before or in bed.
Day 2 went much better. Peanut still asked for snacks more than I wanted. But she knew I wasn't giving in with any snacks. They ate a very large breakfast. It's amazing how hungry you are when you refuse dinner. I decided on an early lunch around 11, since we haven't gotten too used to going all morning without snacks. I'll eventually shift that time back to 12:30 which will work much better with Peanut's school schedule. Both girls ate everything that was on their plate. By 2, they were once again whining. I knew there was no way they were making it to 5 for dinner. So I gave both a healthy serving of fruit. Bean Sprout, once again, ate everything. Peanut decided she didn't want grapes. So once we got to dinner, Peanut ate over half of the 'chicken' I gave her. Yea, it was pork, and she had no clue. Bean Sprout only ate the rice, but she did try the 'chicken' several times. She hasn't tasted it enough to like it yet. No one asked for snacks at bedtime, surprisingly!
I am not allowing her to 'trade' her food once she's sitting in her chair. Tomorrow, when I make our weekly meal plan, I will enlist the girls to help me make different lists. We will make a different dish each night and they will always have something that I know they like/have eaten before. Once we get into our routine of no snacking and eating the whole dinner, then we'll start introducing new foods. Here's to hoping we can continue moving forward and the girls start being much better with food. And for me to eat better!
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