Dinner

[dache]

I've been thinking about this for a while and since I still cant decide so I decided to talk to you my ladies about it 😃
DD's dinner. What to serve and when? I'm going to be all over the place but please bear with me.
Sometimes before we leave home, she'd have something small, slice of apple, few sips  from my smoothie, or ao
something like that.
She has breakfast at nursery. Bread and jam, other spreads, macaroni (I think this is strange but it's normal breakfast meal at nurseries here  )
First snack is fruit
Lunch is around 1, before nap and js soup/stews like meals and salads.
Second snack is more like a treat, thats around 3.
Most days we see DH at his work and he gives her something like a waffle or banana.
At home, dinner is my main meal of the day so I cook things like baked rice and salad, pasta and sauce, wraps, chilly, beans...

My first dilema is if I should give dd same from what I eat or give her something like a light supper.
She usually doenst eat much, and what she eats is limited to tomatoes, pasta (no sauce), eggs, waffles, plain rice, lentails, bread, more bread and more bread 😃 Most of what she eats is made of flour.
I think texture is a big issue. She loves tomatoes, but lately she spits the skin. Im thinking Im just going to peel it before I serve it.
She drinks smoothies, so she gets some fruit from there.
I hide veggies in sauces but she does not like it any more. She also spits meat after she's chewed it. 
I didnt worry much about it, but a teacher at nursery told me she's not been eating so well there too. I try and implement the Devision of responsibility model. I put two things I know she likes (most of the time tomato+something) and two things she doesnt. She tried lettuce and cabbage, just a bit, but yayay 😃.
Sitting her at the dinner table is also hard, she stands and sits, and climbs. I think that she's not interested in the food because she is not hungry after two snacks, one after another. So woth dh we decided to skip the snack he gives to her.
Her bt is 8:30 now, dinner was 5:30-6 and thats a lot of time between meal and bt imo. Maybe because push  dinner but Im so hungry when I get home and I'd like us to eat together. Maybe I should have thst snack from DH 😁
Ugh, sorry for the long post. Any thoughys?

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Okay just for clarity sake we call that meal supper not dinner (except my DH who confuses us all) just so my post makes sense lol.

I find my kids did not have big supper appetites when small. They had a big lunch, and less at supper. We do snacks at about 10 & 2:30/3, supper is 5:30/6 (some days earlier to fit in activities but never later than 6 lol).  It also depends what is on the menu, I usually try to follow the Division of Responsibility model too. Tbh I would not peel the tomatoes - if she can spit the peel out, let her do that, and perhaps eventually she may eat it again. If you remove it you will probably get stuck doing it for a long time!

My DD3 is not a huge eater at daycare - too many casserole type foods and she is in a phase of not wanting mixed up stuff! She makes up for it at home or at snack time.

[*Ali*]

Yes I'd offer what you are eating and let her choose what to eat. I'm guessing the alternatives are to make a cometely different meal for her or to give a sandwich, neither of which I'd do given the flour issue.

Have you considered strapping her into the high chair?

[dache]

Have you considered strapping her into the high chair?

She stopped sitting in the high chair a long time ago, maybe about a year ago. She sits on the table with us now. She learned how to unlock the strips, we had too many scares where she almost fell down and she wanted to sit on a normal chair so we gave high chair away.  But I really think I`ve noticed that it`s for the meals when she is not hungry. I`m going to cut the after nursery snack and drinks and see if that makes a difference.

My DD3 is not a huge eater at daycare - too many casserole type foods and she is in a phase of not wanting mixed up stuff!

Same here.  And texture. Can you share what your dinner looks like?

Tbh, probably discipline is an issue too. I`m trying to muster up some courage and tackle the issues. I don't want to say that I don't discipline her because I do but probably I let her get away with far to many things.



She is also in this phase.

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

Same here.  And texture. Can you share what your dinner looks like?

As in what we eat?  ( or  rather what she will eat )

Favs are anything made with ground beef - spaghetti with meat sauce, tacos (she eats just the meat with veg on the side), chili, burgers. She will not eat any other type of meat! Not even a breaded chicken strip lol. I don't go out of my way to make her anything separate unless the meal I make is something I know she hates, I just tweak it - so chicken quesadillas are just cheese for her etc. We had stew and biscuits last night - she ate the biscuits. I try to add variey into her snacks and lunch and overall (like over a weeks time) she does get a decent amount of the food groups.

[dache]

Yes, that`s what I meant. Thanks for sharing. I went to the thread What Did Your Toddler Eat Today? and got some ideas from there.
Dinner went great yesterday. We skipped the snack from dh and dinner was at 6.
It was rice with zucchini; tomato; broccoli and sardines . She tried the sardines  and broccoli and ate all the tomatoes and rice without the zucchini. No moving around (well, as much as two year old can sit still  ).
I`m going to keep at it like this and see how it goes. Thanks for the help.

[dache]

I`m activating this thread again because I dont know what to do  DD`s eating habits have not changed. Maybe she eats even less now

Breakfast would be
banana and biscuits,
bread, butter and jam,
eggs,
eggy brad
oats with dried fruit (very rarely)

other things she eats: potatoes, rice, pasta, cheese, white cheese, polenta, ( I see color pattern here, you think there might be something to it? )

She eats fruit.

Teachers at nursery say she eats well there.
I know she is hungry. I made stuffed papers yesterday, hers were with meat and quinoa, mine with lentils. She had a bite of mine, that was it. Latter she set down with dh and ate bread and butter, and she ate well. 

I know I should have offered the same as for dinner but I know she wont eat it, will have a meltdown, especially so close to bt. She wont eat, we`ll all be wired up, bt will be delayed...I`m picking my battles.

Division of responsibility is not working, I try to hide as many things as I can, something I`m not a big fan of, also not working. It feels like we are stuck,and I dont know what else to try.

[*Ali*]

Have you tried serving things separately? Mine aren't fans of all the food mixed together.

[athenasmom]

I think you are right that dinner is too early after two snacks. This is our problem here too. We moved dinner to 7-7:30 (DD's bedtime is 8:30 as well) and she is eating better. This might sound funny but for us she eats better if she has ice cream. She just loves ice cream and she usually has a little bowl after dinner. But lately I let her have it during dinner and she eats her dinner better. She eats a little spoonful of ice cream and then a few peas then another spoonful of ice cream then a piece of chicken etc. It sounds yucky but the end result is good and hey who am I to decide what tastes good for her kwim? Oh, and she also likes to dip her food. So I put some ranch on her plate and she dips everything in it including her fingers 

[dache]

Have you tried serving things separately? Mine aren't fans of all the food mixed together.

Yes, we do that most of the time, but if I dont stir things up, she wont eat anything other than the things mentioned above.

It sounds yucky but the end result is good and hey who am I to decide what tastes good for her kwim? Oh, and she also likes to dip her food. So I put some ranch on her plate and she dips everything in it including her fingers 

It all goes in the same place anyways 

Yeah, dips work sometimes, but not often enough.

I`m trying something new Having our neighbor`s kids over for dinner. The great invention LOL. It might work better if they are not picking eater themselves 
 

[athenasmom]

It doesn't work here Dache. DS is a great eater and is a good role model or DD. She likes to copy everything he does, but it does not make a difference in her eating. Fingers crossed that it works for you though