One of our parenting goals is to raise healthy, adventurous eaters. We hope our children are always open to at eat least trying new foods and that they will politely eat what is served to them, especially while a guest at someone else's house. Before we had children, Jonathan had a grand idea that each kid would be allowed three "passes"; that is, three food that he or she would not be expected to eat. Everything else, however, would be non-negotiable.
Then entered two strong-willed little girls. Brinnly, in particular, has always been extremely fussy about anything that entered her mouth. And lately she has refused any vegetables or fruits. Not even a morsel will make it past her mouth.
The other day we mustered up enough energy to make it clear to her that she was to have a bite of avocado before eating her pasta at lunch. She refused. Okay, so that was easy...no lunch. After a few swigs of milk she went down for a nap. We decided to continue the plan for afternoon snack. Same result. Dinner. Same result. By this time we had also offered her sweet potatoes and grapes. How long could she hold out?
Breakfast the next morning was started with grapes and oranges. She refused both. Not until 10:30 am that day did she finally request a piece of orange and ate two bites. She then followed that with FOUR plates of biscuits and gravy.
Since then, we have seen slight progress in her willingness to at least "try one bite", so we hope we're off to a better start. Is this expecting too much of a 16-month-old? (I should note that she completely understood the logic of what we expected from her and had demonstrated that skill many other times) Any words of wisdom out there on other methods of produce-training?
Friends of mine had a rule growing up that they had to eat at least as many bites/pieces as their age, otherwise they wouldn't get dessert (and dessert was a big deal for them). At age 5, they only had to eat 5 green beans. You could translate that to eating a bite before eating the rest of the meal.
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