Thursday 5 June 2014

Food fight!

Unlike Eastenders' Biaaanca, I am not a fan of feeding my children chicken nuggets for their dinner every night.

Nor will I put fish fingers and spaghetti in front of them all the time, which is the one thing my three year old will eat up, no questions asked.

Yes, there could be food a lot less nutritious and there's certainly nothing wrong with a bit of what you like (hey, at least he's eating), but I have always liked them to try different things.

My toddler, bless his little pot belly, will wolf down whatever you give him, but it seems my older child has discovered the option of not eating.

And so, this he does ... Every. Single. Breakfast, lunch and dinner time ad nauseam...

I sometimes wonder how many more times I'll have to tell him he can't have breakfast from the treat cupboard, until it finally sinks in.

Obviously, he's just testing boundaries and is at that blessed age where he will try and see what he can get away with. How else do they learn right from wrong?

But gone are the days of force feeding (thank God) or children going to bed hungry.

To be honest, I'm up enough through the night; the last thing I need is a hungry little boy to add to the trips to the loo, dropped dummies and ejected bed sheets.

So, what to do with a child who is a bit too young to empathise with the starving children in Africa or understand that if he doesn't eat, he will soon leave this mortal coil?

Believe me, the phrase "you'll sit there until you've eaten it" is long dead. My little man's record so far is three hours sat at the breakfast table. Unfortunately there's not enough hours in the day for that!

My stepdaughter even trumped that by falling asleep at the dinner table! What can you do then but put them to bed?

I know stricter parents would probably have served it up for her breakfast the next day, but that's just not me!

One great idea from a nanny friend of mine is based on the reward chart system, where you sit down together and create a special place mat.

When they have enough stickers on their place mat, they get a reward.

It's a lovely chance to do something arty and creative together and actually, because it's visible throughout mealtimes it seems to be working really well so far... Let's just see how we get on!

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