Mealtime Refusal & Acceptance

E.M refused to eat her lunch this afternoon.

I cut it all up into little pieces for her, I even offered to feed her, but she turned away. Then I started reasoning with her, and then telling her she has to eat or she'll go hungry. Nothing worked. And so, after about 15 minutes of screaming refusal and crying... I let her have it her way.

NO lunch for E.M.

And (as I expected) about an hour later she came up to me and said, "Mummy, Mummy din-din?" and asked me to get her seated in her high chair. Hehe.

Boost Their Mornings

They say "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day". Essentially because a good breakfast will release energy slowly and keep us from snacking til lunchtime. But children are different, even though they may well finish their breakfast that morning, their stomachs are only small and they normally burn more energy than we do - through all that running around! So, they'll need a little energy boost between brekkie and lunch. This is when they normally reach for snacks. But there are healthier options than crisps and cookies. This is where introducing healthy foods early comes in handy! My girls both love fresh fruit, bananas and berries etc. And these are the best snacks, but if your children aren't that keen on plain old fresh fruits, there's plenty of other healthy options...

• Downsize! Swap full-size chocolate bars for treat size ones, large muffins with mini ones and 4 biscuits for just 2.

• Give dried fruit a try: bags of dried fruit come in many combinations and taste completely different to fresh fruit, and small snack size bags are available too!

• Make a finger buffet: Serve up vegetable sticks (carrot, cucumber, peppers) with plain yogurt as a dip, along with crackers, breadsticks, rice cakes and cubes of cheese.

Eat Your Greens!

Did you know:

96% of our children don't get enough fruit and veg?

Which is disappointing considering there's sooo much to choose from. But if the kids are really not convinced, here's some tips on smuggling some of the good stuff into their meals.

• Try adding finely chopped carrots, sweet potatoes, parsnips, onions or mushrooms into a spaghetti bolognese sauce.

• Make smoothies. You can use several different fruits in one recipe - so experiment!

• Milkshakes go down well too, simply mash up some ripe bananas/strawberries, pop in a blender, add ice cubes and milk and blend until smooth.

• Mash sweet potatoes, swede, parsnip or carrots into mashed potato.

• And my personal favourite: Make home made pizzas with lots of veg toppings. Sweetcorn, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms and onions all work well!

My Mealtime Madness

I've been sitting here for ages now. Why is it always like this? I feel like i'm fighting a losing battle trying to get her to eat her dinner nicely. ...No, it's not Miss J.R, it's the Baby. She scrapes her food off the plate, pulls the tablecloth, stabs the tabletop with her fork, she refuses her food - only to cry when I take it away! And what's worse is that she doesn't do any of this when Daddy is supervising the mealtime. Only me.

Oh Cucumber!

Ok, someone help me out here. J.R has taken a very strong liking to vegetables and fruits that contain mostly water.

Lord knows how this strange preference has come about, but one thing's for sure, she's refusing to eat much else! Some examples of what she will eat: banana, cucumber, lettuce, peas...

She's been a picky eater for a long time now, but this is driving me crazy. When the health visitor saw us on christmas eve 2008, she weighed her and J.R has put on NO WEIGHT in 6 months. In fact she'd LOST a few ounces.

I'm not sure about that result, to me that just says "Mummy doesn't feed me." And that's not good. I've tried everything to get her to eat more variety, but she's not having it! Tried the whole chopping-up-small-and-mixing-together trick but to no avail. If there is some sort of green, mostly-water vegetable on her plate, that's all she'll eat. You can forget the meat, can't risk putting on a bit of weight now can we!