Things my 5 year old daughter loves

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1. davee
   Posted March 18, 2009 at 11:08 am | Permalink

   Useful ideas, there, popey – cheers.

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2. davee
   Posted March 18, 2009 at 10:10 am | Permalink

   Curry? How did you manage to swing *that* one? Excellent work, in any case

   Can’t make our two eat anything ‘interesting’, like pizza/curry/chinese…

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3. Alan Pope
   Posted March 18, 2009 at 10:38 am | Permalink

   Wifey is a Nursery Manager so she has some experience of getting kids to eat stuff, and had some good recipe books. I think the Annabel Karmel ones were quite successful.

   I started by cooking mild curry for Sophie and Sam since they were very young. Very simple and slightly sweet creamy sauce, served with rice and naan bread. We took Sophie to our local Sunday Buffet Curry house when she was 3 years old. She loved it, ate the lot.

   I guess the two main “tips” I’d give is always try to eat together at the table, and where possible, all eat the same thing. We found that the kids really felt good about eating what was in front of them when Mummy & Daddy had the same thing. The handy thing for me is that many of the “family meal” type things (spaghetti bolognase, lasagne, chilli, curry) can be made in large quantities for the whole family, thus saving on making lots of little things for each individual.

   One thing we always encourage the kids to do is try stuff even if they _think_ they don’t like it. If they try a mouthful of something and they really honestly don’t like it that’s fine – _I_ wouldn’t eat something I didn’t like, and I’m 36, so I don’t expect my 5 year old to either! We give plenty of praise to them when they do _try_ something.

   One trick I have used in the past involves putting something that we all know they don’t like (such as broccoli) in the plate along with the other parts of the meal. When they aren’t thinking we do something like this:-

   Dad: "Hang on! Did I just see some broccoli in your mouth!?" (a lie)
   Dad: "I did! I did, Mummy! I saw Sophie eat some broccoli!"
   Mum: "No way, I don't believe it" (hamming it up just a touch)
   Sophie: "I did!"
   Mum: "I don't believe it"
   Sophie: "I did, look!"
   

   She the proceeds to eat some broccoli.

   Parents 1 – 0 Children.

   Having said that Sophie still wont eat Pizza, and has recently gone off cheese.

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4. Anonymous
   Posted March 18, 2009 at 10:29 am | Permalink

   petes daughter is nine _month_ old

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5. Alan Pope
   Posted March 18, 2009 at 10:40 am | Permalink

   Fixed the typo.

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