My kid is a picky eater.
It drives me nuts.
He will eat spaghetti and peanut butter and jelly without any problem though. But seriously, I feel like I shouldn't be letting him eat those same things over and over again. It worries me. Granted, he will eat small amounts of other things, such as 2 bites of chicken at dinner, a few bites of a hamburger, or some prime rib or pot roast. He loves BBQ ribs, and also loves baked ham. But seriously, how often do you eat those in a normal house?
One night we ordered curbside to go from Applebees, and I got the riblets, which I let him eat once we discovered he liked them (I swear I'd give him my entire dinner and I'll eat cereal any night of the week if I know he will eat it). We also got fries and that night I introduced him to ketchup on fries.
He loved it.
He spent most of the meal sucking ketchup off the fries, but he did eat most of them. I began to think that maybe ketchup was going to be a great way to get him to eat food.
And it worked for a short while. Last night I made him some chicken nuggets and gave him a load of ketchup on his plate. He did suck alot of the ketchup off the nuggets, but he was eating them, too! He used so much ketchup that before he finished the first nugget he kept asking for more "kepp-up", and I obliged. After all, he WAS eating food!!
Yeah well, 1/4 of a ketchup bottle and 2 chicken nuggets later, he was "all done" and wanted to get down. He even threw the 3rd chicken nugget on the floor. Awesome. ARGH, again with the frustration. 2 chicken nuggets does not qualify as dinner in my eyes. How do I get this kid to eat!??!?!
Yeah. Isn't this fun? Remember when we were positive that our kids would eat anything? Um, yeah. I say just be patient and keep serving everything on his plate whether he eats it or not. If he's hungry enough, he'll eat it. And over time, he's just gotten used to some things. Lawson will eat all vegetables now as long as they have parmesan cheese on them, and he loves baked potatoes. And he also loves quesadillas and I hide things in those too. For a while, when he was Aidan's age, I resorted to pureeing vegetables and hiding them in things (carrots and broccoli in spaghetti sauce, spinach under pizza sauce - that sort of thing). It's a pain in the ass, but it WILL get better.
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