“Toddler Tip Tuesday” is my new weekly series I have started for 2012. Each week I wil bring you a little tip that will hopefully make your life a bit easier.
Raising a toddler can be quite a journey! Between tantrums, hugs, meltdowns, tears, kisses, laughs, boo boos, and everything else, toddler times are often a roller coaster of emotions. My oldest son is 3 and he is NOT an “eater”. He has days where I wonder how he is surviving on what little he consumes! We have tried all the “trickery” I have can get my hands on, plus all the tried and true techniques handed down from grandparents. Here are a few things that have worked best for me:
- Serving food with toothpicks-Will LOVES getting samples at the store and eating them with the toothpicks they use to serve the food with. So, recently if he is giving me a hard time about eating I simply stick a few toothpicks in his food and tell him to try the samples. He has been gobbling them right up!
- Unison eating-This doesn’t work so much when I do it, but if Daddy or one of the granparents say “You take a bite of chicken and I will do it at the same time” then he usually goes right along with it.
- “Shape” it up-I am not a food artist but when I ask Will what shape he wants me to cut his sandwich, if I even come close to his T-Rex, Thomas, or pentagon requests, I can usually get him to eat about half the sandwich!
- Use “Special” or Adult utensils/plates: Will loves his special plate that has characters on it. However that doesn’t always help to motivate him to eat. Another thing we have tried is giving him an adult fork to use. He really enjoys eating with a “Mommy and Daddy fork”.
What are your favorite tips to successful eating with a picky toddler?
If you are looking for some great books that have terrific reviews on this subject, here are a couple of my favorite:
(I ♥ this book)
[…] have mentioned in my Toddler Tip Tuesday posts how I often resort to trickery to get my picky eater to eat. One tactic is to make eating fun and […]