Those immortal words!

A new take on ‘Ten Green Bottles’

How many of us struggle at mealtimes with our delightful children?  My son lulled me into a false sense of security over food – before he hit his second birthday he would eat anything and everything put in front of him.  The only exception to this was avocado – yuck! But I could live with that, as he had such a good, healthy, balanced diet.

His second birthday hit and so did the problems at mealtimes.  One week he’d eat broccoli like it was going out of fashion, the next week he’d throw it across the kitchen in disgust!  All good fun.

I’ve tried to remain calm through all of the battles over the last year and a bit.  Breakfast is normally a breeze, and lunch is fairly ok, but come to dinner time and the fun begins.  For a while now, it has been taking 45 minutes to get my son to eat some of his main meal.  He loves fish and chicken and will eat them (without any sauce or gravy – doesn’t take after me!)  without too many problems, but veg – forget it!  But in most instances, after our 45 minute stand-off, he’ll turn round and eat the lot, except potatoes – which I cannot convince him to eat in any fashion.

The situation is very tiring, I’ve tried swapping lunch and dinner menus around, but the battle just reverts to lunchtime.  The only upside to this option is that I’m slightly less worn out at that time of day!

Anyway, tonight, after a particularly Terrible Three’s kind of day, I decided on a different tack for the sake of my sanity …….

My son ate his fish straight away and left all his vegetables as normal, I had a sudden brain wave and started singing (yes, I probably scared him into eating – LOL)

4 bits of carrot sitting on Monkey’s plate, 4 bits of carrot sitting on Monkey’s plate and if Monkey decides to eat 1, there’ll be 3 bits of carrot left on Monkey’s plate …..

and would you believe it, he ate all his carrot, broccoli, cauliflower AND new potatoes!!!!  He thought it was a great game.

I’m enjoying my moment of glory and wondering how many meal times it will be before he gets fed up with this game and the battle commences again ……. watch this space!

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