Fussy eating – dinnertime warfare

You’re sat at the dinner table locked in an epic battle of wills. You don’t want to be the first to break eye contact, it’ll show your weakness, but your opponent is a masterful genius when it comes to dinner time warfare. Your adversary is your three year old child. You might be many years their senior, but when it comes to the dinner table, they get the better of you every time.

Relax….there’s no need to feel alone!

Parents across the land are experiencing your exact same issues. Most children will go through a “picky” stage at some point in their early development, even if they have devoured everything you’ve placed in front of them up until now. Don’t stress, it’s nothing to do with your cooking (which is delicious of course), your child is just finding new ways to assert themselves. It’s all part of their development. But when their method of asserting themselves is to refuse your hard-cooked meal…boy can it be frustrating. While it can be difficult to maintain your calm in the face of adversity, remember that any reaction to their refusal will only highlight to the child that there is an issue at hand, potentially worsening the situation.

Here at Tot’s Pantry, we want to help you have more of the good days, and fewer of the bad. We provide your child with healthy and nutritious food, which has already been sampled and approved of by a number of cynical toddlers. Let us take care of the cooking to ease your heartache if yours is refused.

So, is there anything you can try to get the food into your child? Here are some recommendations we’ve come up with in response to common issues that will help you out-manoeuvre your child’s cunning mind games:

  “My son won’t eat his healthy casserole but I don’t want to start another meal from scratch, or to fill him up with crisps”

Exactly! There’s no sense in filling them up with empty calories. Either play hard ball and don’t offer anything else that evening, or if you are concerned that they need to eat something, wait an hour or so and try a simpler alternative. By that time your child might be hungry, and more crucially, they won’t associate this new meal as an alternative to the one they refused earlier. One small victory for you!

“My daughter won’t eat the carrots I give her, even though I know that she eats them at daycare”

No worries, it’s nothing personal. Sometimes texture or temperature is the only difference between your child enjoying their meal or rejecting it. Since their taste buds are more sensitive than ours, it often takes many attempts before a child will like the taste of something, so don’t give up! Next time, try cooking the food in a different way, such as roasting vegetables instead of boiling.

 “I know my children are hungry but they don’t seem interested and just play with the food on the plate, it drives me crazy!”

Getting your children engaged in the food preparation process can really help with their attentiveness at meal times. If they have been part of the process, either by helping choose the produce at the shops, or helping to wash, chop or mix the ingredients, it can really stimulate them and get their buy in.

But hey, at the end of the day, your child is your child alone, and no one knows them better than you do. And remember, your own child knows you too, and is one of the few who will learn from an early age how to push your buttons, leaving you wallowing with a pint sized glass of wine every evening.

One of the most important things you can do for your child is provide them with a healthy and nutritious meal to aid their growth. It won’t always be easy, so savour those moments when you take that ‘licked-clean’ plate from your child, or when they scream for more of your delicious vegetables. Just try to avoid reaching for the foods that you know they will eat but deep down you know aren’t what is best for them.

Once your child is filled to bursting with one of your yummy home cooked dinners, or one our delicious meals, they’re bathed and sleeping like the angel you know they really are, you can rest assured that your struggle for supremacy is won, for today at least. It’s time to make sure you have a healthy, nutritious meal yourself to sustain you, as there’s probably going to be a whole new battle tomorrow.