Trying Something New: Daily Battles with Toddlers

With toddlers, just about every food is a "try something different" experience. They'll go from spaghetti hounds one week, to "get these red worms off my plate" the next. You never know.

For example: one weekend, while staying at my parents house, we discovered that my twins love lima beans. They had already eaten, and now the adults were sitting down to eat. The girls were running back and forth to their Pop Pop to get the lima beans, and laughing and grinning, and just having a good lima bean time. So of course, the next time a meal rolled around, we opened another can and put them on their little tray.

Yea, right.

Every single one of those beans was thrown on the floor. We used the leftover's for dinner that night and the same thing happened. The girls would only eat them from their Pop Pop's tray.

On another occasion I had made up some mildly seasoned pinto beans. With the idea in mind to start making a form of bean burrito for them for lunch, I melted some cheddar cheese on the beans in a bowl, and served it up with some crackers.

Yea, right.

One of the girls meticulously and slowly threw every single bean on the floor, while the other one, very meticulously picked all the melted cheese off and then ate it.

It took a few more tries, but now cheesy beans are one of their favorites.

Another time while visiting my parents, we served the girls and their cousin (a year older,) each a bowl of apples and cinnamon oatmeal. My girls love oatmeal, and really go to town on it. However, my nephew seemed a little confused by it. Finally, my mother told him it was "Cookie's and Apples, all crushed up."

Very slowly, he put his head down and raised his eyes and said, "Dirty Apples."

So, as I'm sure you know, with toddler's, it's a constant battle, and you have to just go with the flow. There is no point in trying to force them to eat something new, that won't get you anywhere at all. Just present it, until they at least try it, and then move on.