I was about to type about her snacks. She came back from her Dads and I didn’t give her anything between half 2 and 5pm apart from an apple and she ate 90% of her tea, she had stuff she liked but I also told her before I put her plate down she wasn’t getting anything else and she said “ok mummy eat all of it” and she only left 3 pieces of pasta.I’ve had to deal with *so much* of my own food hang ups when they leave perfectly good food. A lot of it comes from my parents and ‘clean your plate’ stuff. I’ve caught my dad trying to force my toddler to eat food in a certain order (meat first), and had to have a word with him.
Here’s what we tend to do:
* always serve a safe food that we know they’ll eat: bread, a veg they eat, fruit
* new food in small quantities for my own sanity & not to overwhelm them
* chill the duck out about what they’re actually eating
* we’ve just introduced stricter snack times, they were going rogue with snacks and I think ruining their meal time appetite. We’re now following the same snack timings as nursery.
* what we serve for meals is what we’re having, nothing else.
We have good days and bad days, learning to trust that they know when & what they want to eat is a challenge for me, but they need autonomy & food is one of their biggest cards to play.
She isn’t like this anywhere else and the only person to blame for it is me I’ve enabled her to say no to her meals and she will get another one. (This is just for me though, I’m not in anyway saying other people have made thier kids fussy, hope this doesn’t come across as the wrong way)