Personally I’ve never been good at playing rock, paper, scissors. I just can’t seem to find the right “2 out of 3″ combination to win. You know what else I’m not really good at these days? Getting my daughter to eat her dinner. Lately it seems like we (her mom and I) can only get her to take as many as 3-4 bites before she is bouncing around the house jumping on the cats, saying “Daddy I want money!” and requesting candy. Some nights, like last night, nothing we do works and it just ends up being a day of hodge podge eating and grazing. (Hence the title “The Grazer”)
With a 2.5 year old I’ve realized that a bit of trickery (and enticing) works best when it comes to eating food. One thing you don’t do is ask a child what they want to eat without giving choices. Example:
Me: “Sweetie, what do you want to eat for dinner?”
Daughter: “Ummmm…..candy and…ummmmmm…..CANDY!”
Me: “Ummm, maybe we won’t eat that right now…how about PB&J or Ham and Cheese?”
Daughter: “But I want ice cream….I don’t want Peanut Butter!”
Without giving choices I allowed her to put in her mind what she wanted to eat instead of thinking about what the real choices were. Once that happens it becomes increasingly more difficult to get my little Grazer to eat dinner because visions of mini ice cream cones and jello go dancing through her head while staring at carrots and ham and cheese. I get it…..I would want the exact same thing if presented that way.
My point really is that communication is vital with these youngsters. Not only are they sponges absorbing everything we say but they are starting to develop associative memory and understand (to a point) that they have choices other then what’s presented to them (does that make sense?). Basically she’s learning to outsmart me!
Back to the drawing board…………….
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