What do you do when your preschooler refuses to eat anything that isn't candy-coated or out of a cereal box. (And I mean right out, without milk.)
Last night I made chicken pot pie. Jackson refused to eat it. Any of it. My current rule is that you can choose not to eat one thing on your plate at any given meal, but you need an extra helping of something else (usually a vegetable).
Jackson refused anything. And the only things on the table last night were the pie and salad.
It might not have been so bad except that he refused to eat lunch earlier that day even though HE chose hotdogs.
Instead, he went off to bed . . . until he snuck out later to steal some cookies.
What fun I had scraping them out of his mouth so he didn't get to enjoy them.
This morning he awoke to chicken pot pie and salad. Obviously, this is not what he had in mind. After hearing him scream and whine about it--even with a bribe of a chocolate chip eggo, I finally tried to force feed him. You would have thought I had put him in a torture chamber that was ripping his body apart.
When I did get something in his mouth, he began dry-heaving and threw up all over the floor.
So now we are at a stand-still.
Do I starve him all day, or give in and put something in his tummy?
I'll tell you, preschool isn't coming early enough today!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Our rule is usually, you eat what we give you or you don't eat. I like that that you gave him the same thing for breakfast, I haven't tried that one yet. I also thoroughly enjoyed the part about you scraping the cookies out of his mouth.
No advice here, though I'm watching to see what everyone else says. I just read an article entitled "6 Food Mistakes Parents Make" (I'll send it to you), though I disagree with some of what they say. "Studies show . . ." that you can't make them eat anything and you should just put it on the table and they'll eventually try it. But I don't buy it--I don't care HOW many times green beans stare at them from the middle of the table, my kids are not going to voluntarily eat them!
Good luck, and you're not alone in this!
Jared is a great eater. Sometimes we have to threaten not being able to do something later if he doesn't eat his vegetables, like play the Wii. Maybe you could come up with something, that you would actually be able to take away if he didn't comply. That has worked with him. Alex is very picky and has a sweet tooth like me. With him, if he doesn't eat and he is begging for chocolate chip granola bars, I let him cry and then usually 2 hours later he will give in and eat what I had originally offered him. I saw on some talk show they talked about not having anything in the house that is off limits. I don't think I could do that, we want our chips, our ice cream, Robbie wants his sugar cereals. But if it gets bad enough, maybe you would have to rid the house of all sweets until he learns that he has to eat healthy food. It is so hard and so frustrating. Good luck!
I am so sorry, and I have to say we relate! We've had this struggle over and over. We make them have a bite of everything, but only one bite. After that they can be hungry. We do sometimes have to force feed. But, we've made so much progress since implementing this policy (now Evan will eat some chicken, beans, and grapes, for example) that we just think it's worth it. Evan did recently start gagging up his dinner when we made him tackle a bite of zucchini. I'm with you - I don't know what to do about that either. The ultimate objective is for them to willingly eat vegetables, and even ENJOY them, and I don't see that throwing them up is going to help accomplish that. But, then again, forcing the veggies in the first place is the ONLY way I've had any success at getting him to have even a bite! Sigh.
Post a Comment