A child of the so-called, or miscalled, bad eaters can become a test worthy of an iron-man. In the world of meals and children, the experience you have and the meals you have served does not matter that as your child does not finish most of what you have put on the plate and alarms are skipped. Even seeing how, even without eating, your child has more energy than you and your partner together.
And then, as if that were not enough, everything that comes to mind, your mother appears with some home remedy to "whet your appetite", by the way, has anyone stopped to analyze the phrase? Open appetite? I suppose that apart from the instruction manual, they also don't give you the key to your children's appetite when they are born. And of course, if your remedy fails the following will be that we take it to the pediatrician (what he does not know is that you have already asked for time). Perhaps, you recognize this and some of the following nine situations that occur at meal times.
Everyone is a professional
The world of food and children deserves to be studied, at least during a semester, in the medical career. Of course, like everything that has to do with the development and education of children, everyone has "your effective method"That has passed from generation to generation and has saved the lives of more than one family. And, as with sports or politics, everyone would do better than professionals. Well, maybe I exaggerate a bit , but very little.
I wanted…
No matter what you have prepared, how much I have asked you throughout the week and the dishes that have been eaten before, whatever you put on the table will not like it or just that day, You will fancy something else.
Cutlery, who wants cutlery? We already have hands
No matter what you insist with them, for them their best utensils at mealtime are their hands and their imagination. The fork will use it to make music, to reach that macaroni they have put in the glass or to prick their brother.
If you change it and put a spoon on it, they will say they want the fork and they will put that "how do you want me to eat this with what you have given me?"
Cut or not cut, that's the point
At this point we have gone through all the stages. At first you had to cut everything, although it was something that did not matter, because they were able to take the whole steak and put it in the mouth as I neglected. Subsequently, in the "I alone" phase it was all a drama, a drama if you cut it, a drama if you didn't do it, a drama if you did it in too large, or small pieces, or they were not square or triangular ... Everything happens and we enter the current phase of the cut, although I know how to do it, because it is much more comfortable and we are in that phase of "why do anything if it is much better for someone to do it for you".
The weather becomes very relative to the mealtime
When Einstein postulated his Theory of Relativity I am sure he would have done it very differently if he had been a father or if he had watched my children eat. In my case this is one of the reasons for discussion regarding the most common meals and I recognize that the fault is not only with my children. I have always eaten very quickly, with 20 minutes I have time to eat several dishes, coffee, cup and cigar. On the other side we have them, that in that same time what they have achieved is to find the orientation they should give to the plate.
I remember that my oldest son did not know that they knew the hot green beans until he was three years old and that the time I made them macaroni and cheese in American recipe, they had to be eaten with a knife and fork. And so with any dish, the flight of a fly is enough to forget what they were doing and the hunger they brought and time stretches to infinity that seems more like we are at the wedding banquet than at a dinner A tuesday mondo and lirondo. And yes, for me it is exasperating to see how far they are able to go and I am sure that the ideal thing for them would be to have a kind of free buffet, just like in hotels, where they could go to take what they wanted, whenever they wanted and the amount that pleases them.
The food is the best of toys
I have no doubt about it, with it we can paint, use it as a projectile, make shapes and almost everything we can do, except eat it. And so we can make a train with the macaroni, a wig with the spaghetti (thus we learned never, never, to take the whole spaghetti to the table), we can learn to separate the colors and thus a rice three delicacies becomes an impromptu class plastic, now I eat pink, then yellow, use peas as ammunition against my brother or play to put them in the glass. Use your imagination and you will see how your children's is much older.
The negotiations
Once you start negotiating, you know for sure that you are not going to achieve any of your initial goals, it is like when you haggle, you will never get the initial price, it may be a good price at the end, but never as the first.
To me, this type of negotiations with my children at lunchtime, remind me of American trial movies. "Your honor at Jonson's trial against Mckentry, it was admitted that they left half of the peas in exchange for a glass of dessert milk," "protest sir, the beans are giving me arcades. That is harassment of the witness."
Other times I look like a shopkeeper in an Arab souk: "no no no, that hake is very good, it is recently brought from the ocean by strong and hard fishermen who have fought against the storms so that I can put it on your plate", "no no no, I already put you the smallest piece of the universe, you can't leave half on the plate, that would not be fair. I have brought that hake from the confines of the fish market especially for you "
And so every day…
Put the food you put on the plate, it will always be left over
The amount of food to prepare at mealtime is a long learning process that also varies over time. At the beginning, it is normal that you put too much and if there is a clear thing with the food is that when a child is full it is filled and there is nothing else to do (except for dessert, but that is because it goes to another special stomach to desserts).
So little by little you adjust the amounts so that as little as possible. I calculated it was to add to the amount that I considered appropriate for a dish, another little more than it would be that it always ends up on the floor (I am seriously thinking of adopting a dog) and the negotiation part, that I will allow you to leave in the plate. Hey, sometimes I get it.
If everyone doesn't eat the same thing, you're going to have a problem
The day will come when the previous hour of dinner looks like the counter of a McDonalds where everyone wants their own dish made in their own way, but in the beginning, as someone has a different dish than the rest, it can be a cause for civil war. Normally, if you introduced a new dish made the same dish for everyone and thus avoid the excuses of "is that dad is not eating broccoli", do not see how bad I have had with some meals, how hungry did he have to go through hit the first bite to a cauliflower? But it has cost me a few fights the hamburger dinners (the little one did not know, could not, hold one but he wanted hamburger) or prepare a plate of regimen for me, put it on the table and it would become the most desired in the world and just what the two were wishing to eat (so there is no way to keep the line)
Nothing learned will help when you go to someone else's house
The day you go to someone's house for lunch or dinner with the children, or go out to a restaurant, you just have to say that they don't like a dish so that it is just that they ask for or on the contrary just that day they hate death Your favorite dish. It is like that, you don't have to turn it over, children out of their usual environment reset, let's accept it.
These are some situations that you can find, if you have not already done so, but surely there will be many more, some comics and others not so much, be patient that everything happens.
In Babies and More | Time to eat with the family, The food is not thrown away: "Good use"
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