Quote:
Originally Posted by shakran
My parents had a pretty simple way to introduce foods and get me to eat them. "Want dessert? Then eat that." |
One of the households I worked for followed a similar rule--if you ate your dinner, you got dessert; if you didn't finish, you got a piece of fruit instead.
To me, that's better than some of the bargaining I see between parents and children at dinnertime.
I recently heard of an activity in my Infant and Child Development class that I'll be using with my own children. In a daycare, they put out bowls of different foods on the kids' table, and they said the kids could only get up from the table after trying everything. They didn't have to eat a lot; they just had to try everything once. Every kid but one did the activity successfully without additional prompting; the final child tried everything but the grapes until my teacher sat with her and convinced her to try the grapes. The child had never had a grape before and was a bit scared of them, apparently. But the child found that she loved grapes! I thought it was a great way to expand a child's horizons.
One of the activities I've done with children is a "smell tour." We took out various things in the fridge, even some of the more exotic things that only Mom and Dad ate, and we smelled them. The little girl I cared for was inspired to try a kalamata olive after smelling it, and she asked her dad when he came home if he could make them some curry, because it smelled tasty.
I have to say, I love this thread because it combines two things that interest me--food and child development!
