My kids are now 5 and 3½ and although they don’t eat as wide a variety of vegetables as I’d like, they are making improvements all the time.
Getting kids to eat what you want them to eat can be a source of stress for moms. We all know our kids need to eat a healthy, balanced diet. What we don’t always realize when we’re feeding Baby pureed peas is that around 2 years old, that kid will likely go into the “beige food” stage. At that point moms have a few choices: a) hide pureed vegetables in other foods that they will eat, b) give in and offer only beige, or c) put the vegetables on the plate – even though you know you are going to have to throw it in the trash.
I was in the camp of “c” most of the time. I didn’t do the pureed veggie thing because I figured hiding the offending vegetable was not going to help learn to eat vegetables. If they can’t taste it and don’t know they are eating it, then they are not learning anything.
Instead I opted to put those vegetables on the plate. Sometimes they would only take one bite (as required by me) but that was fine. My rule for all foods is “You just have to taste it.” Just one bite and they can be done. Yes, a lot of vegetables went into the trash, but over time they started to become more willing to try new things and it was less of a struggle.
I won’t lie to you, there were plenty of times when I would just skip it. Instead of offering a plate of food I knew they would not eat I would give in to nuggets or macaroni & cheese with some fruit on the side instead of vegetable. You have to pick your battles and sometimes a weary Mommy is too tired to fight.
I now only make them a different meal if we are having something spicy. They eat what we eat 90% of the time. They will eat broccoli, corn, carrots, peas, green beans and sometimes spinach or lettuce. I’m glad that we are making progress and I feel confident that they will continue to try new vegetables from here on out. So hang in there all you moms – it will get easier!
