Hellobee Boards

We are pretty firm about trying something once. We always tell her if she doesn't like she can spit it back out. Sometimes she discovers she likes it and others she spits it back out. We just want her to try, she doesn't have to love everything.

The younger one is showing signs of being pickier than my older one.

I let her dip it in ketchup. Last night she dipped her shrimp in ketchup and ate 6 of them. This, after she took a bite and told me she didn't like them.

Since she turned 3, she has become much more opinionated and tells us that she won't eat a lot of things. We always make her take a bite. We do let her chug her milk after taking the bite if she "hates" it. So, she has the ketchup and milk options to get them down, as needed.

Sometimes it helps to take some for yourself do they see you're enjoying the dish. Some kids also eat better if the ingredients are separate but won't eat them all mixed up... for example my son won't eat veggie salad, but I can often get him to eat tomato and cucumber slices.

@MamaCate: yup, this Daniel Tiger episode is a winner. Now I can usually say, oh what would Daniel say? And she begrudgingly says, try new food, taste good... We also have the you only have to taste it, if you don't like it, that's ok, rule.

It definitely isn't 100% successful but it helps a lot. If she doesn't like something she spits it into my hand (which yes, is gross). And ketchup helps a lot.

I don't know if this would work for most families, but the way we do it is we literally never make any type of big deal about food. We just put it in front of us and eat it. She sees us eating it and usually just digs in herself, and then if she doesn't like it, she'll stop. Typing this out makes it sound stupid but it works for us. My LO will try anything really, as long as she sees us eating it.

@catlady: yeah we have tried that, she doesn't care if we are eating it or not. Stinker.

@mediagirl: I don't know what happened. That was only the 2nd time she has ever throw up (the first was about 15 months and she was crying and eating her hand at the same time). But lord that was nasty smelling.