While Im sure I am not the only Mom on the face of the earth that struggles with a picky eater however I feel so alone. I know there are techniques and solutions that parents around this Country and World have used to overcome this nightmare and here is what I have found useful!
Allow me to lay down a bit of foundation if you will to my 4 year olds diet...Chicken nuggets, cereal, yogurt, PBJ, french fries, and just about any piece of candy. Yep you read them all, thats all she eats, and will even entertain eating. But I have tricked her to eat things like pork chops, baked chicken, turkey, and even seafood...
Here's my secret....
1. What I cook - she can relate to. This what I mean by that. We put milk in our cereal, well I put milk in mashed potatoes, and a mashed potato is just a crushed up french fry! By using this technique she can relate a mashed potato to a french fry which she likes, and she can relate the milk in it to a bowl of cereal. So we call it a bowl of french fries. Another example is Popcorn. Yes you read that right, popcorn. Well we also, have a bowl of corn I just dont pop it, and we add butter to it, just like I add butter when we pop it. So we have corn thats not popped that tastes exactly the same!
2. Shake 'N' Bake everything. I am a HUGE shake n' bake fan - I will shake n' bake anything and everything! So by doing this with chicken my daughter thinks its a chicken nugget just cut up funny, and we have a bowl of french fries with it! I have tricked her into eating not only just chicken this way, but also pork chops! We cant forget the bowl of unpopped popcorn!
3. Vegetables. You are probably wondering what I do for vegetables. This was a big mystery for me to solve because vegetables are hard to mask into something else...So I went out and got V8 juice, and she LOVED it! So we have glass of V8 juice with dinner. But it cant be the original V8 juice it has to be the berry flavored. But I also, make smoothies and I dump green beans in it with all sorts of fruit, and she doesn't even taste it!
4. I 'sea'food. I would of never imagined my child enjoying fish sticks...BUT she does, why because they are breaded. Yep wrapped just like a chicken nugget, and cut just like one she loves them!
5. Thanksgiving Dinner. This dinner is a picky Moms worst nightmare, why because you want to sit down with your family and enjoy a nice dinner but here you have a child eating a PBJ, or chicken nuggets. I got clever last Thanksgiving, I made just ONE chicken nugget and took the breading off (I thought for sure this would be an epic failure) but to my surprise it wasnt. I mixed the unbreaded chicken nugget with turket, a bowl of french fries, and unpopped popcorn and BINGO Thanksgiving Dinner for the picky eater!
See I am living that there is hope, and you can get your picky eater to eat, you just have to come up with clever tricks to get them to eat!
Side Note: I tried the whole go to bed hungry thing like the pediatrician told me to, and didnt work my child didnt care she had NO PROBLEM going to bed hungry so that is what prompted me to become creative with not just how I cook, what I say!
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