Friday, February 27, 2009

Eat Your Vegetables!

I think I've blogged about this before, but the issue has come up again. Why is it so darn hard to get my child to eat vegetables?! We've tried EVERYTHING (in our mind)! It's so frustrating because I think he eats too many carbohydrates. I mean, this morning he ate multi-grain cherrios and milk. For breakfast, he ate fruit and chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A. And for dinner, there was mac-n-cheese, a roll, which we took away until he ate his veggies, and sugar snap peas. Two bites of veggies and then he could have the roll. Two bites! That's all we asked! We tried force feeding him. We tried saying that he couldn't have the roll until he ate the veggies. And we tried saying that he could get down from the table. All those rolled into one big fight. Why are two year olds so freaking stubborn!!? Ahhhh! And then when I saw tears coming and screaming, "I don't want to eaaat," guilt set in, and it was so hard not to cave. He clearly wasn't going to eat his veggies. It had been almost an hour, and dinner quickly went sour. I guess this is a lesson in parenthood. To be patient with your children, and set the best example as you can. To eat your veggies, and perhaps, one day your child will follow your lead. I can only hope that my 4 month old child will eat vegetables. I sure as hell am going to make sure he gets those BEFORE he gets fruit baby food. Maybe when James sees Jesse eating his veggies, he'll think he can eat them too. I remain hopeful.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Deceptively Delicious?
Make muffins with carrots?
Covering veges with cheese sauce?

Lauren M said...

Oh I hate when dinner goes so badly I lose my own appetite. :-( That happened recently when I made something that caused S to just refuse to eat and G to follow her sister's lead until I sent S to time out. Two years ago we had to make a rule that no one is allowed to say "ew" or "yuck," but just try a bite of everything and not eat it if you don't care for it. That's easier said than done, though! When S was almost 3 I decided she didn't eat enough veggies either and started offering her more raw stuff like sliced peppers, cucumbers, carrot sticks, etc. with ranch. By the time she was 5 and G was 2.5 raw veggies were just part of most meals and both were eating salads (I found Earthbound Farm Baby spinach to be the key to salad because it's so tasty and small, though I still break it up more for littler mouths). Shredded carrots are a big hit in chicken or tuna salad and if a kid doesn't like mayo, ketchup works! Anyway, it'll happen and really, if he's eating fruit, that's awesome, too!

mommaladybug said...

Thanks for the encouragement. Persistence is the key. To keep on trying, I guess. Maybe I'll try the raw pepper strips again. He likes dip, but usually he'll just eat the dip. He's taken a few bites of strips before, but then that's it. Try try again I suppose. I just hate being wasteful. The lady at the WIC office said that toddler veggie servings are only in tablespoons, which surprised me. But their stomachs are smaller. Anyways. . .I'll keep trying. I just don't want to become a short-order cook, you know?

Lauren M said...

Yeah, some days all I do it seems is give G snacks.