Eating with Addie is pure torture . . for all of us. Give her chocolate candy and apple juice and forget about the rice, peas and chicken! She can sit and pout and whine and cry all the way through dinner . . to the point where I want to say “I’ll sit in the car while you all eat!”
Nicole and I came up with a plan .. the Clean Plate Club. She has to eat everything on her plate and if she does, she gets to choose between two fairly healthy snacks. Yesterday we went to Walmart, or as Addie calls it .. Daddy’s store . . and bought all kinds of snacks – popcorn, yogurt squeeze things, crackers, pudding in cups, applesauce in individual containers, graham crackers in little individual serving bags, and things like that.
At breakfast yesterday morning, she ate everything and Nicole offered her crackers with a cheese “dip” or a bag of of dried apple slices. She chose the apple slices.
At lunch, she whined and cried and stirred her food around . . we had shrimp fritters and homemade mac and cheese. She swore she didn’t like shrimp, though she loves shrimp, and would hardly eat any of the mac and cheese. I think she was testing the waters to see if she still got her prize even though she didn’t finish her meal . . but she didn’t get her snacks. She was pretty shocked that we weren’t going to give in, but we didn’t.
Eating Popcorn
For dinner, we picked up Chinese food to go and brought it home. She had a couple of pieces of chicken and some fried rice and she was pretty happy to eat it all and get to choose her prize. Nicole offered her mini-Oreos (ok . . not everything is 100% healthy) or popcorn and she chose popcorn.
Let’s hope the bribe incentive plan works to get through meal time without tears.
Karen Sutton says
What a great idea. My son goes thru the same thing with their 4 y/o. I’m going to suggest they try the ‘clean plate club’.
Evelyn/Starfishy says
Creative bribery gets you everywhere as a parent. In this case, I would say it is a win/win situation. Good plan! -Evelyn
Trina says
Your DIL is very fortunate to have you back her up. I remember going through the challenge of dinner time with my daughter so I read everything for ideas. One book suggest that I read was put the child in another room to eat if she won’t eat her dinner. I felt the disapproval of the great grandmother when I did that. (Truth be told, I didn’t like it either). Then I read another book that suggested something else and this worked for us. The idea was to put on the plate the number of whatever the child’s age was. For example if the child was 3 years old only have to eat 3 green beans.then she can get down from the table That worked with our daughter. And if she wanted more she can have more. I wish I could remember the name of the book.
Quilterbee says
When my kids were that age the Dr. said this was normal and not to make a big deal out of eating. Just let them eat as much or little of dinner as they want. He said when they get hungry they will eat. Maybe one bite of each thing on her plate will work without the tears. As long as she will eat one bite so she’s learning to eat the variety of foods fixed for dinner and her weight at the Dr. office is okay small grazing meals may help. She will outgrown this. Family mealtime should be pleasant for everyone. Children will test your limits and what they can get away with. One bite of each item and then leave the table takes the drama out of the dinner time. When she finds out nobody cares and she’s not getting all the attention she will outgrow this sooner. Good luck. Sometimes those terrible twos aren’t so terrible as the terrible threes.
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