Dinner time in our house has become a bit of a nightmare and battle. Since T got sick on holiday (early July) he’s not been keen on food, well dinner in particular. For the last few nights it’s just been unpleasant with him not really touching his food. This evening I made him parmesan crusted chicken, potato & butternut nuggets and peas. Ok I’ll admit that he did try everything but spat each of them out and didn’t swallow a morsel. Why? Why do I try and be a good mother (ok maybe I’m trying to be perfect but more on that another time), and make him homemade nutritious things so that he will get a good balanced diet? Why haven’t I learnt this? Since he was small and was weaned he’s always turned his nose up at the majority of things I make for him so I should actually just stop but then I feel like I’m not doing everything right.

Breakfast is either oats with nut butter & yoghurt or honey & yoghurt or scrambled eggs with cheese or french toast aka eggy bread. His 11am snack is usually a peanut butter sandwich which he eats half of, a piece of fruit and maybe a fruit stick. Afternoon snack is something I’ve not had much control over (this week particularly) as Jenna the au pair has been looking after him. Maybe what I need to do is limit what he can eat when he wakes up to only a small piece of fruit or a small bowl of popcorn and then he’ll be hungry at dinner time? Maybe also we need to start eating dinner with him at 5:30/6pm and he will eat more? He definitely seemed more keen to try new things and eat his food when we all went out for dinner the other night so I need to maybe give that and less afternoon snack a try and see how that goes.

Having said that, though, he’s a toddler and they are notoriously bad and fussy eaters but I just don’t understand why he eats pretty well for the rest of the day and then refuses at dinner. Ho-hum I guess I just need to remember that the big picture is actually pretty good – he’s eating well through the day and he sleeps well at night, he’s intelligent, well socialized and a polite little boy so I’m obviously doing ok.

This was his dinner this evening, yum!