Well, I think it’s safe to say that Andrew is too clever to be fooled by us. I thought I’d try and be clever and trick him into eating some vegetables tonight by calling carrots ‘orange chippies’ and the corn ‘yellow specials’. We call his vitamins his ‘specials’ – it’s short for ‘special smarties’. Not sure why we started calling them that, but I guess it was just me trying to trick him into eating something I didn’t think he’d be willing to eat by calling it something different.
Anyway, tonight we tried talking up his ‘orange chippies’ and ‘yellow specials’ in a vein attempt to try and get him to eat them, but as soon as they were on his plate it only took a quick taste for him to realise that they were vegetables, which meant they were a no-go zone.
We tried to persuade him all through dinner that these would taste delicious and he really should give them a try. “Look at Mummy – she’s eating all her orange chippies! Yummy!”. Of course this didn’t work. We even tried bribery at the end. We told him he could have a “lolly-bean” (similar to Jelly Babies, although not quite – he calls them “lolly babies”) if he would try some of his veges. He didn’t fall for that either. It was pretty simple for him – he wanted a “lolly-bean” and didn’t want any veges. That’s it. I’m not sure he understands bargaining yet…
In the end it was actually pretty simple. We turned it into a game. I’d take a bite from the carrot, talk about how yummy it was, then offer it to him. I’ve no idea why it worked, but he ate about 5 carrot sticks (a.k.a “orange chippies”) and only asked for a single “lolly-bean”.
The icing on the cake was getting him to eat a bite of carrot and then announce that it was “delicious!” I think it’s fairly obvious from the video below that he wasn’t quite enjoying them as much as he said he was.
I suppose the lesson learnt from this one is that perseverance is the key. Making a game out of something is far more effective than bribery or trickery. At least, that’s how it worked out for us this time.
TTFN
//Daniel//