The Dreaded Vegetable Battle

My sweet, spunky, youngest son is great at eating eggs, bread, dairy, meat, and any fruit. He is not great at eating vegetables, at all. Actually the only vegetable he really eats on a regular basis is raw carrots. So, as we have been doing the Whole30, it has been a struggle to get little man to eat the veggies so here are some of the things we have tried:

1. Hide the vegetables. I put vegetables in everything. Smoothies with kale, scrambled eggs with spinach and zucchini, taco meat with shredded carrots, onions, and potatoes, frittatas with sweet potatoes, spinach, and peppers, spaghetti sauce with butternut squash puree. Anything I can put vegetables in has them in it. Sometimes I tell him they are in there, sometimes I don't. Depends on my mood, and his.

2. Don't hide the veggies. I do hide they veggies, but I also put both new and familiar veggies on his plate and tell him that he has to try them and eat them, Vegetables are a part of life. You can't be healthy without them.

3. Give them choices and control. He has to try everything I put on his plate. But he can always choose to add more or different veggies as well. He has eaten raw carrots at almost every meal since we started the Whole30.

4. Let them play with their food. If we are at a nice restaurant I hold the boys to a different standard, but at home, they can play with their food. Little man often eats standing up. He has all kinds of weird things that he does with his food. If he eats, I don't care how he gets it to his mouth.

5. Watch what they are eating and when. Snacks are important. Children need snacks, but if they are snacking constantly, or are eating junk (even healthy food that doesn't necessarily have all the nutrients they need) they may not eat at meals. We have a stocked snack bucket full of healthy things, but none of them compare to what I make at meal times. And, little man will snack ALL DAY LONG if I let him. So when he says he is hungry sometimes he gets a snack, but I always make sure he has something in his snack that includes protein, for example nuts and a banana, beef jerky, a boiled egg and strawberries, apples and cashew butter. 

6. Take them grocery shopping with you. I always tell the boys that I will let them pick out any vegetables they want. If they will eat it I will buy it. Even if we try it and don't like it, it is good to let them be involved in their food choices. 

7. Make them dinner helper. The boys alternate between dinner helper and table setter. I don't know why they love to peel potatoes and carrots, but they do. And even if little man complains about eating them, I figure that the expose will eventually lead to acceptance, and acceptance to approval. When I was in high school I was a vegetarian. We lived with my grandmother who made steamed vegetables EVERY SINGLE DAY. There wasn't a whole lot of choices so I ate them, EVERY SINGLE DAY. To this day I LOVE steamed cabbage even though I couldn't stand it at first. Same with avocado. As an adult I decided it was healthy and so I should eat it. I didn't really like it at first, but I kept trying it. Now it is one of my favorites. 

8. Don't make a huge deal about it. Eating vegetables is crucial, but the truth is that stressing about isn't going to make them eat them any faster. I could possibly FORCE little man to eat, but it wouldn't turn him into a veggie lover and it wouldn't foster a healthy relationship with food. Plus, I want him to make the decision to do something that is good for his body. 

9. Focus on the healthy things they will eat. If there are healthy foods that your kiddo will eat, feed those food to them! Spinach has vitamin A, which is great, but so does cantaloupe. So get them to try the spinach and then eat the cantaloupe. It's not ideal, but it's better than McDonalds any day!

10. Celebrate their victories! Celebrate the crap out of those victories. We will clap and cheer for a clean plate in our house. We don't ever make them eat everything (because I am not always hungry enough to eat everything on  my plate, so it make sense that they wouldn't always be that hungry) but if they like a new vegetables, or eat all their food, we are excited about that!

11. Write down what they eat. When I started writing down what the boys were actually eating I was surprised by just how much little man was actually eating. He may not eat everything I want him to, but he is doing just fine!

12. Remember that we don't live on vegetables (I mean bread) alone. Feed their little souls. Vegetables are important, but it isn't the end of the world if they don't like them. There are more important things to focus on!