If you haven't noticed Drew is a picky eater. And I mean PICKY. Since he was around 14 months old he would make himself throw up versus eat anything he didn't like - we think this was mostly a texture thing. So overnight the kid went from eating EVERYTHING to about 3 things. I'm not exaggerating by much. He still will only eat those "3" things - bacon, PB&J, chicken and french fries, hash browns, sausage, pizza
We let it slide and didn't force new foods until a few months ago - deciding cleaning up puke at every meal wasn't worth it. Not we had a tendency to lose our appetite (come to think of it that would've been a nice weight loss plan).
Fast forward to our current dinnertime torture sessions, we're forcing Drew to try new foods. For weeks he has had the chance to earn "stickers" on his reward chart for trying something new - along with a number of other "chores" he can do. The reward is anything from stickers to a meal at "Old McDonald's" - his favorite. Well, recently he could care less about earning his rewards. He'd rather starve than eat anything.
And to be fair I'd put only a bite of food on his plate, and the rest would be bread/PB, Crackers etc. Not enough other stuff to fill him up, but enough that he wouldn't starve. Often we'd have to pin him down to put the new food to his lips, send him to time outs, turn movies/TV off - whatever leverage we seemed to have. Needless to say there was a lot of screaming and crying from the child - Dave and I felt like crying too out of frustration, but we refrained.
We haven't found anything new that he likes. Luckily there's only been a lot of gagging, no puking. That is until last night. I made spaghetti. We put some sauce and 1 noodle on his plate, then gave him a slice of french bread. The meal started out like any other - screaming sessions filled with "I don't like it", "I'm not hungry" (which 2 minutes before dinner was served he was begging for goldfish snacks).
Dave made a game out of dipping his bread into the sauce and eating it. We told Drew all he had to do was dip his bread and he could earn the sticker. He did it. Then on his own went back for more, and more, and more. Dave and I were making "eyes" across the table - you know the "Holy Crap he's eating it, but let's not make a big deal about it" eyes. Then he asked for more sauce and more bread. Three servings later he announced he loves spaghetti. He asked to have it for dinner tonight too!
That my friends is progress.
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