The Battle of Wills Has Begun

Lucy has always been a good eater, but that is not to say that she always ate everything in front of her. She certainly went through her phases.  For a while she would only eat mac and cheese and hotdogs.  (A shout out to the women who took care of her at Undermountain for not judging us too much on those lunches!) Thankfully she has broadened her horizons and will now pretty much eat anything.  I credit a lot of her eating habits to living at a boarding school during those first 3 years.  The dining hall had a lot of options, and she got to eat things that I (or make that Steve) wouldn't cook at home.

I need to keep all of this in mind these days as we struggle to get Caroline to eat. It's not that she won't eat, it's just that she won't even look at or touch anything that does not fall into one of her favorite food groups:  fruit, bread, or yogurt. I write this without exaggeration.  The child actually cries when we put dinner in front of her some nights. What we struggle with most is how to get her to eat protein.  She will eat scrambled eggs, but I feel like I shouldn't be force feeding the child eggs everyday.  First of all, I can't imagine that it's particularly healthy and most importantly eggs are not allowed at her daycare. We have about a 40% success rate with chicken nuggets, but again I feel like that isn't the healthiest option.

I know what you're thinking:  why don't you just feed her non-breaded chicken? 

Let me just give you a snapshot of what that looks like:

Yes, those are real tears, ladies and gentlemen.

This was the scene at our dinner table tonight.  Caroline promptly ate her strawberries because they fall into one of her favorite food groups.  She refused to eat anything else, including the chicken breast everyone else was eating.  As I have mentioned before, the child loves chocolate milk, so we tried to bribe her.  Simple exchange:  you eat one bite of chicken and you can have some chocolate milk.  This may not be the best parenting strategy, but it was worth a shot.  As you can gather from the picture, Caroline was not impressed.  In fact, she burst into tears every time we said the word "chicken."

You know who really got the best deal out of this meal? Lucy.  She ate her chicken, salad, and strawberries (which she likes anyway) and she got to have some chocolate milk afterward.  Just look at that smile:

 

The evening ended with a sad Caroline and long conversation with Lucy about not gloating when you get something and someone else doesn't.  It actually went about as well as I had hoped.