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? about dinner time
Dd is a picky eater. She does eat a healthy variety but it's limited. The only veggies she gets are veggie burgers, black beans, pinto beans, or hummus. Meat wise she'll eat meatballs or chicken nuggets. I'll give her ravioli with meat or veggies in it as well because she does like ravioli. For fruits she'll only eat the freeze dried fruit from Costco or a banana. We've tried and tried and we keep offering but we don't force. She's very strong willed so if we try to push too hard we know it will back fire.
But now she's almost 2 and we know that she can physically chew and eat most of what I cook. I make things with her in mind. I don't want to forever be a short order cook and I know that giving in at dinner can lead to her thinking she can get us to cave in other areas. So we decided to start saying here's dinner, that's that. This only started on Tues and last night we went out so that can't be factored in. We gave her a portion of what we were eating and a bag of apples. She played with it both nights, whined some etc. When she said she was all done, after NOT eating, we said ok. Wiped her up and we all went about our usual night. She had her milk before bed and that was it. We didn't offer a snack. Sure enough, she slept through the night both nights. We thought for sure she'd wake up early and starving. She was hungry when she woke but didn't wake any sooner.
Breakfast, lunch, and snacks I do give her things I know she'll like and eat.
So if she's not waking up in the middle of the night from hunger pains than she's just not that hungry right? We're doing the right thing here by saying this is dinner and I wont' make another meal? This is so hard but we want to do the right thing here. Our friends never did this and their now 3 year old won't eat anything. They regret giving in and making her an alternate meal. She will ONLY eat yogurt for lunch and dinner is down to 2 things. I feel bad for them and want to avoid that stress here.
Thoughts? Sorry this was so long!
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Re: ? about dinner time
Have you tried sneaky chef?
https://www.thesneakychef.com/
Yes, you are doing the right thing. This has good tips
https://www.alphamom.com/smackdown/2009/09/toddler_mealtime_wars.php
My DD does wake up earlier when she doesn't eat, so I do give-in to her tastes to some extent.
I do not cook different foods for her, but I do take out a portion of what I'm cooking if I know that I'm adding something to it that she won't like. So she gets her noodles without sauce (or sauce on the side so she can choose to dip it or not). I also might rinse off the spoonful of food I give her to make it more plain. I usually give her a little bit that is just like ours as well and sometimes it turns out that she will eat it and sometimes not.
I will also give her extras like tomatoes, other leftover veggies we might have in the fridge, or a side of cheese or tofu (all things she likes) to help her fill up.
The only time I make an alternate meal is when I'm making something very spicy or with chunks of nuts in it and then I make her fish sticks (ironically, I do not eat fish myself, so this expands her food horizons in ways she wouldn't get otherwise).
I think this is kind of a middle ground and I'm ok with it since she's not just living on chicken strips and PB&J sandwiches.
Like you, I do give DD what she likes for lunch and snacks.
When my SS was young (like 8yo), we would offer him some alternatives as well. I think the key is that the alternative is something that he doesn't HATE, but it's not something he LOVES either (so no replacing baked chicken with pizza, but offering green beans instead of squash is ok). Most often he was given the choice to add raw carrots to his meal to help him fill up if he just couldn't stand to eat most of what we were having for dinner. He's now almost 15 and has gotten over almost all of his childhood food aversions, which at one time included gravy, tomatoes, onions, rice, soup, milk on his cereal and eggs. He still doesn't eat milk on his cereal and he doesn't eat eggs - but he'll eat cooked tomatoes and onions without picking them out and likes everything else he used to hate. Oh, except squash. He still hates summer squash (yellow or zucchini). Oh well, can't win them all.