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Kids/Parenting

Getting kids to eat vegetables

The other night I turned to my husband, Ryan, and said, “Do you think Hayden is a picky eater?”

“YES!” he said without hesitation.

I don’t think so, though. He eats a wide variety of foods: the standard toddler fare of peanut butter, bananas, graham crackers, fruit other than bananas, yogurt, bread, milk, juice, desserts, pizza, cheese, TUNA!!! (which has become a family joke), green beans, black beans, corn, etc. He doesn’t care what color his food is, he doesn’t care if it’s touching one another and while he does love his “yunt” (lunch, meaning sandwich, usually peanut butter), he’s not fixated on one single food.

Today, I’ll just focus on the vegetables—what can we do to get our kids to eat more vegetables (or is this one of “those” battles?)

  • Offer the food repeatedly (without high expectations). Some people say it takes as many as 16 (no, not 16,000) interactions with a food for children to try it. Hopefully these do not all come at one sitting; that seems a little excessive, yes?
  • Let them see you eat it. You’re the best example for your children. Hayden won’t eat pepperoni, even though his father does, because he’s seen me pick it off my pizza too many times. This isn’t always mandatory of course—for the most part, Hayden has not yet picked up on what foods I don’t eat. I was 22 when I realized my mother didn’t eat peas. I love peas!
  • Have veggies ready and available for snacks (and often nothing else). Also helpful here: let them use ranch dressing, or another dressing they like. Ketchup, if you must (hey, isn’t that a vegetable? 😉 ).
  • Fill half a child’s plate with veggies. Another quarter should be meat and the last quarter, starch. Quick and easy guide to balancing your meals.
  • Serve veggies “family-style,” leave the rest in the kitchen. When sitting down to dinner, only bring the platters/bowls of vegetables to the table. Leave starches and meats in the kitchen—if you really want more of those, you’ll have to go get them, but if you or your children are just hungry after finishing your first plate, the vegetables are the only convenient choice.
  • Play games. My mother would play that our thin-cut green beans were worms and we were baby birds. I love green beans (though the thin-cut ones are just a bit slimy for my taste 😉 ). Another favorite: your child (this one’s usually better for boys) is a dinosaur and he’s going to eat the trees (broccoli).
  • Hide them if you have to. Zucchini banana bread, anyone? (Nope, me neither.)
  • A caveat: Don’t bargain, especially not for ‘better’ foods. Apparently, psychologists say that bargaining with your children (“Eat two more bites of peas or no dessert!”) just reinforces the notion that the food they’re averse to is disgusting, worse than the desired food and something to be endured.

And I can’t talk about eating habits without mentioning an awesome book on the subject, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink. Some of these tips come right from his book.

I found this book really entertaining—and pretty shocking. He looks at our hidden motivations for eating, factors that influence us in eating—and strategies for being more aware of what we eat (or just tricking ourselves into eating less!).

But obviously, I’m no expert in getting your children to eat their veggies. What’s worked for you?

Part of Works-for-me Wednesday.

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Kids/Parenting

Hayden’s first identity crisis

Ryan offered to let Hayden call Nana Jane the other day, but Hayden wasn’t interested at first. A few minutes later, he grabbed Ryan’s phone and started asking for “Nana! Nana!”

So Ryan dialed his mom and gave the phone to Hayden. His mom answered: “Hello?”

“‘Yo?” said Hayden.

“Is this my little grandson Hayden?”

Long pause. “Uhhhh . . . I sink so!”

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Kids/Parenting

One crazy day

Wow, it’s been a while on the pictures front. And after all those posts about great picture posts!

All these pictures were taken last Friday.

Hayden is a weirdo.

hayden is a weirdo: apron and hat

Where on earth does he get this from?

Ryan is a weirdo: apron and hat

Oh.

And by popular request, my belly, as of a week ago (34 weeks/6 weeks till my due date):

baby belly, 34 weeks (Rebecca)

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Kids/Parenting

Picking your battles with a toddler

It’s one of those pieces of wisdom dispensed to every mother with a toddler: choose your battles. Its frequent repetition, however, doesn’t make it less true.

Of course, the things we choose to battle over will vary from mom to mom and child to child. But I think there are at least a couple things we can agree are worth fighting over—and a few that will only end in tears all ’round.

Worth fighting for

  • Anything involving a real safety issue
  • Serious property damage (Hayden’s entering a destructive/accident-prone stage!)
  • Violence toward people or animals

Like banging your head on a brick wall
As Hayden becomes more and more fierce in his independence, I’ve realized there are some things that you shouldn’t or really, truly can’t make someone else do.

  • You can’t make someone eat—at least, not safely. And bargaining (eat two more bites of vegetables or no dessert!) is supposed to reinforce the undesirability of the already-hated food item. Stupid psychology.
  • You can’t make someone sleep—at least, not without drugs.
  • You can’t make someone calm down—but I have picked up some great tricks here. My favorite is when Hayden is getting upset or whining and it’s the beginning of a downward spiral, I take a deep breath and blow it out in his face. Then I have him do it back to me. He almost always does this because he thinks it’s funny—but I just got him to take a breath.

Really, I guess, you can’t make people do anything, really, but as a parent we’re used to having some modicum of control (or being expected to have some modicum of control!).

These are just the first things I thought of—what have you found is worth fighting for? What’s not?

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Kids/Parenting

From the annals of Hayden speak

Last night, I caved. Hayden hadn’t fallen asleep after an hour in bed (which is very unusual for him). I went in to him because he was starting to cry—and he instantly asked for toast. Coming from a two-year-old who can’t seem to gain any weight, and who only had a half of a sandwich for dinner, the pitiful cry for “toast” broke down my mean mom resolve and I brought him out for some toast.

Hayden is still working on many of the finer points of syntax (just wait until Linguistics 430, kid!), so his questions are often framed like, “Toast, me?” Or, one of our favorites, “Bite, me?”

So when Ryan was trying to tease Hayden into sharing his toast, Ryan said, “Bite, me?”

Apparently we’ve pulled this joke on Hayden too many times. Rather than offering his dad a piece of his toast, Hayden opened his mouth wide and aimed for Ryan’s nose.

Yep, kid. Your dad said “Bite me.” Good answer.

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Kids/Parenting

Parenting FAIL

Hayden has a small, crying monkey toy. Squeeze the monkey’s belly and he cries (or makes a monkey shriek, but Hayden has always called it crying). We call the monkey Baby Marty.

Today Hayden and I found Baby Marty while exploring his (not-so-) quiet time options. I handed Haydie the toy and he was very happy to see Baby Marty again—and of course, first thing, he squeezed Baby Marty’s belly.

When Hayden first got Baby Marty, he would make the toy cry, then cuddle it, holding it up to his shoulder to comfort the tiny monkey.

Today, though, he seemed to have changed his nurturing technique. After a few rounds of monkey shrieking, I asked Hayden, “What’s Baby Marty doing?”

“Cwying.”

“And what do we do when he cries?”

The old answer was to demonstrate loving up the monkey. But today, Hayden’s answer was:

“I s’ake!” And he shook Baby Marty.

He will probably not be the one in charge of helping to calm the baby when she comes.