Food Fight

When S-Boogie started eating solid food I made the decision to let her determine how much she was going to eat. Several books I read and the nutrition class I attended told me the same thing: you decide what they eat, the child decides how much. I feel like I've done a good job offering her regular, healthy meals and snacks. And mostly we have had stress-free eating because sometimes she chooses to eat and sometimes she doesn't. I learned to offer her small portions so I didn't worry about wasting too much food, and we have times that are for eating and times that aren't so that she isn't just snacking all day. The system seems to be working for Little Dude too.

Unfortunately now I have a preschooler. And over the last few months I feel like we've evolved into being the parents I didn't want to be. We find ourselves bargaining over how many bites she has to eat before leaving the table, bribing with the promise of dessert if she'll clean her plate, forcing her to sit in her chair for nearly an hour until she finishes her cereal. Now that she's older, she often doesn't eat because she doesn't like the appearance of the food or because it's something new. Or she is distracted by singing or talking (she really never shuts her mouth, I'm not kidding). I feel terrible, because I didn't want food to be this big of a deal. I sometimes don't clean my plate. I don't expect Little Dude to clean his plate. But I also know that if we don't strongly encourage her to eat she'll wake up in the middle of the night complaining of hunger.

So, now I'm trying to figure out what my options are. I'm tired of every meal feeling like a battle ground. First of all, I think we're going to mostly cut out the treats. And make them unconnected to eating. I'm not sure how to do that, because we were both raised with the mantra "you have to eat real food in order to get a treat". But I don't like bribing my kids. So I think we're just going to have treats at Family Home Evening once a week or if we have friends over. I think I also need to be more strict about afternoon snacks and not allow them after four o'clock. Hunger is a great motivator for eating your dinner. I do serve healthy snacks, but eating yogurt at five o'clock ruins dinner and isn't enough to last all night. I also think we need to stop bargaining on bites. She needs to try everything, but if she wakes up hungry from not eating she's old enough to remember that the next day.

The hardest battle we have is one I don't want to give up though. If we didn't force her to do it, S-Boogie would probably go all day without drinking anything. She doesn't like to drink, but she often complains about pain when she goes to the bathroom. Which she only does once a day at most. I've asked her doctor twice about the possibility of her having an infection, but she keeps telling me it's not likely without a fever. I also suspect that S-Boogie's wiping technique could use some help and could be contributing to the problem. But I think we have a problem with hydration. Trying to get her to finish a glass of milk is like pulling teeth. I give her milk because she refuses to even touch water, even though I know it's not as hydrating.

I guess I've been feeling kind of frustrated lately because I feel like everything with S-Boogie is a major fight. I know part of it is being a preschooler, but it still drives me nuts. Last night she picked "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man" for the opening song for Family Home Evening. However, as we started singing she kept interrupting us because she was sure the words were "the clouds came up" instead of "the floods". When we tried to explain to her what a flood was (water rising up) she still didn't believe us. So we sang the rest of the song with her shouting "clouds" and us shouting "floods". I guess it shows not only how stubborn she is, but how stubborn we are too. Some days I don't know how I'm going to get through the next thirteen years of her life since I'm already irrelevant.