To give in or not to give in?

[elf]

Kate, now that my boy is on one nap I tend to do 'dinner' around 4.30pm (sometimes as early as 4pm if lunch was around 11am due to an 1130am nap).   I try to make dinner some sort of pasta/vege or meat type dish.  After bath I also do a pre bed snack (kind of like a supper I guess) of either yogurt and maybe a mini sandwich, or custard and fruit.  If I feel like he had very little 'carbs' at dinner, I sometimes even mash up a weetbix in the yogurt and fruit for the complex carbs but the early dinner has been working well for us lately so I haven't had to do this in awhile.  But he doesn't have a bottle so I like to think that something is in his tummy at around 6pm, but still try to work on the dinner thing as well.  I think breaking up dinner works quite well.  For DS, it is more that he doesn't want to be in the highchair for long, meals have to be around 10 mins as even if he is hungry, he would prefer to keep playing...  I am also guilty of having a toy on the highchair to distract (which I'm sure is a big no no)... I have one of those toys where you move the beads around and that gets me through meals sometimes as he plays with it as I feed him...certainly not ideal... but it works.

[Tweakster]

We don't do a pre-bed snack since our dinner is late as it is but it is something to consider.  I'm like Karen, I make sure to offer something I know he will eat.  And I do keep offering stuff I know he WON'T eat because apparently repetition is the key.  Example, I've been offering tomatoes (like the cherry kind) for more than 6 mths now and he has yet to eat one.  Yet he will always pick it up, examine it, put it in his mouth and try chewing, then shake his head and say 'no' and pull it out.  Thing is he doesn't like those things on his plate then.  He wants them off, so he'll squish them or push them towards us or throw it lol  Ah toddlers eh?

We usually give him fruit after dinner, once he's down from his chair.  And now I give him his bottle at the same time.  So it's like a snack right after dinner if you will lol

[Love, laughter, & PJs]

Ah toddlers eh?

I think this is the heart of it!   And like you said, Martina, it's about remembering they're toddlers and not babies anymore.

Will try a post-dinner snack (even if it's awfully close to dinner, as you said, Wendy) and also making sure there's something he likes on his tray at the same time as something new, so he doesn't learn that if he doesn't eat what's new he gets something else after.  I think that timing was what was bugging me.

Of course, after saying that,  I gave him mini-ravioli with pesto for lunch, which is one of his favorites.  He literally has eaten half the package (1.5 adult servings!) in 1 sitting at times.  And he ate about 4 bites.  So who knows!! LOL. 

Thanks for all the thoughts, ladies.  Feeding these toddlers really is a challenge!

[Tweakster]

Kate has he got teeth coming in now?  It may be that he's just finding it to cumbersome to chew. 

[Mom to M&M]

What Wendy said and exactly what we are facing right now....

[Love, laughter, & PJs]

Kate has he got teeth coming in now?  It may be that he's just finding it to cumbersome to chew.

I've been thinking about that.  He's gotten 3 new teeth in the past couple of weeks but I thought the last one had just cut through the other day.  But then he just woke at 1h15 from his nap so *sigh* I don't know.  Definitely possible!