Food Wars

K was the easiest baby ever.  He slept like a champ, he had a happy disposition, and he ate anything. I always worried about having a finicky eater but I really thought it wouldn't happen.  Jon and I aren't picky at all and I cook a wide variety of stuff.  I assumed that if we exposed K to a variety of foods, it would never be a problem.  Around 18 months he decided he would not try things.  Even food that he had loved as an infant. His favorite thing in the world was yogurt and now he won't even consider it. Mostly it was anything that would make his hands gooey or felt strange on his hands. I am wondering if it is because he began using utensils at such an early age. 

We eat healthy food, so it wasn't like he was saving his appetite for fast food,snack cakes or cookies. His snacks are cranberries, nuts, cheese, etc. Since his snacks were healthy, and he LOVES most breakfast foods, I didn't push the dinner issue. I didn't make him anything different than what we were having.  I would give him a piece of fruit in addition to dinner.  He would, 9 times out of 10, eat only the fruit for dinner.  He would not even try a bite of anything else.

After nearly a year of this, and an episode of The View where they had a guest who said that if children aren't exposed to a certain food by the age of 3 they may never like it, we decided we needed to do something. So we resorted to bribery, which works surprisingly well.  It was slow going at first.  Every night the bribe is different, it may be a couple of M&M's or his favorite show, and there is still protesting at the start, but we have seen major improvements.  K has cleaned his plate for almost a full month now and his protesting is minimal. To be fair, had he gagged or been visibly disgusted by a food we wouldn't have had him eat the whole thing, but he hasn't.  Last night we had pulled pork tacos with a spinach blue cheese, dried cherry, and almond salad and; after he finished his, he helped me eat mine.

 Tonight we had chicken and broccoli stirfry over quinoa.  

 We started out at his table

and moved to the dining room table but, as you can see, he ate it all. This is month has been so major for us, it has been a frustrating journey at times but we are making strides.  It is so important to us that Kane eat a variety of healthy food and enjoy it as well.