From morning its breakfast, snacks, lunch more snacks then dinner. Every single day. Most kids today know what they like and don’t like, and become involved in picking what they eat. You will hear, “ahh but we had this food last night”, them referring to leftovers, or “we had rice the other day”. I found that putting my foot down was the only way I would stay sane. I am the parent so I know better, right? Children need a balanced diet, and that means a little bit of everything, protein, carbs, sugars, calcium, fruit and vegetables and so on. My kitchen rules are you Must Eat what is prepared. It took time to make, it was made with your health in mind and it was prepared with love.
For the most part this has been a winning formula. Once in a while you will hear a complaint, but ultimately plates are cleared at the end of the day. If you don’t want to eat then, ok, put it away in the kitchen. When the hunger pangs show up, they always come back to finish. That being said, I don’t encourage forcing children to eat, if there are specific foods you notice your child doesn’t appreciate at all, take note and perhaps substitute the food with something else. I will give you an example, my youngest son doesn’t like eggs, he doesn’t like the smell, if he has smelled that the dish has eggs in it, it is very unlikely he will eat, he would rather go to bed hungry.
