I don't have a lot of pictures for this post or for anything when I want them right now. Our laptop was crushed by a falling child (just off the couch) so all of my pictures are still waiting to be transferred from the dead laptop to the living laptop. So, please, excuse the lack of cuteness.
This is the second post in a series about life with three preschoolers. So many people say to me,
"How do you do it?!" like I mentioned that I levitate or cast spells,(I would find both of those skills extremely handy, but I don't have them) but really, this is just our daily life and there are plenty of days that I don't do it that well. I do, however, show up everyday and I'm fairly certain I get points for that. So in an effort to show people how I do what we do I started by talking about
snacktime and how I changed it to make it work for our family.
This time,
dinner is served!
Dinner, at our house, is still a work-in-progress. I'm not going to lie, sitting at a table with three preschoolers is stressful. Due to a variety of interpersonal problems we do not all get to sit at the table for a wonderful, leisurely, old-school family meal. I wish we did. I wish we could. It's not in the cards right now, but it's a goal we are working toward.
Our first step along that path is getting the kids to eat. We do not believe in making a fight out of food. I've seen it done and I find it ugly. When we just had one "real eater"(and a baby) if he didn't want to try his dinner, which he was always encouraged to try, then we'd just make him a PB&J. No fuss. Now we have three eaters and found that as soon as you whipped out one PB&J you might as well make two more, no matter what they originally thought about dinner. We decided to eliminate that alternative dinner while still feeding our kids. Here are some of the tweaks that worked for us.
* By
regulating snacktime it's helped a lot to ensure that the kids come to the table hungry, but not so hungry that they're falling apart about it.
* I do try to make sure that there's
something the kids generally like to eat. There's nothing complicated about adding a veggie that they like, making fruit a part of dinner, or cooking brown rice with chicken stock instead of water to give it a little more flavor.
* I really think
there are precious few things that are worth lowering yourself into battle-mode against a toddler for. We do still give Pickle at 2.5 more of a
toddler's "get out of jail dinner free card" than Boohoo and Peanut get because they're preschoolers and older and they do still have more of an ability to "reason" than he does and we keep that same philosophy until about three years old.
* As ridiculous as it is, my kids will still sometimes eat if I feed them a bite or two of it. I don't know why. I think the novelty of it. I think
the point here is to make dinner fun...maybe music, a good conversation if your kids are older, sharing jokes, etc. Take the pressure off and enjoy each other. At any rate, it's a way to get a bite or two into them. Obviously, this works better with the little two, but even Peanut digs it every now and then.
*
Find the trick that works on their little brains and trick them!
Peanut: We tell him that we can SEE him get bigger/stronger/faster with each bite and so that will usually get five bites into him because you need one for each arm and leg and one for the belly because even though Mommy doesn't want a big belly a 4 year old does!
Boohoo: Constant attention. One easy way that this plays out is just to tell her to eat. It sounds a little weird and I'm not talking about 'forcing' her to eat, but I think that she wants to know that a) we see her there, b) we know what she's doing or not doing, c) we care that she eats, d) we're still in charge.
Pickle: Little Sweetieboy still falls for reverse psychology, 'don't you eat that bite! Oh no! He ate it! Don't you dare eat another! No! No! You DID! I can't believe it!'
*
Teach your kid to listen to their own body. This is a very relaxed process. You teach this by relaxing and realizing there's no benefit to trying to make them eat. Their stomach is in their body, they're going to know better than you if they are hungry. If they don't want to eat don't make them. You use your authority as a parent later on when if they change their mind between dinner and bedtime (I'd have a set evening snacktiIme) make them wait until that point, and then let them have a piece of fruit and a glass of milk.
*
We've gotten a lot of mileage and talking points from the books, "Bread and Jam for Frances
" and "Green Eggs and Ham
". We talk about not knowing if you like something before you try it, we've quoted lines playfully at them at the table, talked about how boring it is to eat the same food all the time, and the like from the stories. We've also talked more specifically about what different foods do for your bodies and generally made a big deal about healthy foods and making good choices. Don't overlook the potential to use education to sway your children. This is also an area that I plan to earmark during homeschool too.
* One of the first things that we instituted was a rhyme:
"Do not be rude about your food." Let's face it, preschoolers are admirably/embarrassingly honest, but this is a great time for them to learn and practice manners. At first we'd remind of them of our rhyme and give them the right words to say. "I hate peas!" turns into "Thank you for dinner, mom" as general gratitude, or they can say something nice about something else and just not mention the peas "I really like chicken!" Peanut has been known to say, "I didn't like peas last time, but maybe I will this time..." and at age four we accept that. At this point, after learning and internalizing the rule if they're rude we remove them from the table for a minute or two until they can think of something more pleasant to say and then they're welcome back.
* Our newest rule/biggest change is the
Strong Suggestion of One Bite Per Year of Age Per Food. I am against this as a "rule" when the kid sits at the table for three hours until they've taken all their bites, but when it's a suggestion you're avoiding a battle of wills. For Peanut and Boohoo, we strongly suggest that they try 3 or 4 bites of each course. At two and a half we still count Pickle as a
toddler and subject to a different law. ;)
* This encourages them to try different foods because
if they do try the bites for each food then they get good faith credit and they can have a PB&J, or they can have more of what they do like from dinner, or they can be excused until the promised (if boring) snacktime later, whatever works for your family. Kids do need to try food multiple times (the last statistic I read I think was at least a dozen times) before they might like it, but no one is going to like something that is forced on them.
* If we're having dessert that night I'll serve a
teeny-tiny dessert teaser with their dinner so they're not entirely left out if they can't/won't eat their food and they know if they eat their bites then they can have more. It's more of a sideswipe and less of a head-on collision of wills.
* If they don't want to eat their bites despite friendly encouragement then we leave it be. I don't want to ruin my dinner/my night/my relationship with a child over four bites of broccoli or stew. If they don't want to eat they can leave the table (after a few minutes) and go entertain themselves without bothering those who are still eating and no snack later (at least here) because we eat very close to bedtime anyway. It's a remarkable nonissue.
*
Allow kids to not like some foods. There's a difference between a child who doesn't want to try a food, one who isn't hungry, and a child who does not like a specific food. Tomatoes make Boohoo gag and so we don't include tomatoes in her "3 bite suggestion". I still put tomatoes on her plate and we still encourage her to try a bite, but there's no pressure.
I realize that a lot of people will disagree with this approach and that's fine.
I'd just really challenge you to think about what you're truly gaining by fighting your kids to eat dinner. I also realize that this is what works for my family at this age/stage of my children taking into account the needs of my children. Some children have medical needs, emotional needs, food issues and that throws everything up into the air.
Do what is right for you and your children.
**I feel like I'm forgetting something, but I am tired and it's slipping past me, so you tell me. What did I forget? What works for you? What have you changed to make mealtime work for your family? What's the best advice you've gotten about feeding preschoolers? What's the worst?**
