Yes that’s right. The lengths I will go to, to encourage my children to be adventurous and healthy eaters!
It all started when I made chicken stock from scratch. So I decided to make a creamy chicken soup with it… The problem is, Master 2 is still getting his head around mixed textures, let alone a soup, but I do have Master 4 who is becoming just so adventurous, I don’t want to hold him back for the sake of Master 2 eating a dinner with us.
So I held my breath and served the soup with a piece of their gluten-free toast and coconut oil to entice them to dip into the soup. Taking a spoon to it would surely be too scary. Both boys said ‘TOAST!’ and pushed the soup aside. Hmm.
I knew I had a better chance with Master 4 so encouraged him to try the soup and I would put a Wiggles song on for him. He did. Now onto Master 2.
Knowing that Master 2’s sensory system would need some working to get him to eat the soup, I tried to encourage him to at least touch the soup, no eating. Instead he became upset when I put a small dollop on his toast plate. Hmm, so I was looking at this bowl of soup not even getting touched tonight….
Out comes the avocado offer! Master 2 was keen. But of course my trick was to throw the avocado into the bowl of soup so he would have to at least touch AND taste a small amount of soup. He wasn’t impressed!
So I offered a bit of corn thin with two goals in mind – a bit of filler now that I could see this soup wasn’t going to be eaten and another object to put in the soup. Master 2 wasn’t impressed but he did dig it out and try to wipe off the end. Whilst he ate the dry end, I scooped the avocado out and left it on the table, making sure there was still some soup on it. Master 2 fell for it and ate the avocado. I made sure he knew he’d eaten a bit of soup, ‘hooray!!!!!’.
I tried with the corn thin again, and this time he ate it all! So I backed it down to small pieces of corn thin dropped into the soup. He was fine with it! In fact, he enjoyed digging around for it. And before we knew it, we were playing hide and seek in the soup. I hid small pieces of corn thin in the soup, he would dig them out and eat half the soup that came with it.
Whilst Master 2 didn’t eat all of his soup, he touched it (crucial for getting his sensory system okay with the idea of eating it), tasted it and even ate decent amounts of it (probably half). And after my first thought that he would finish dinner without having touched it, I call it success!
I’ll be making it again soon, so we can teach his sensory system more 🙂 Oh and Master 4 ate two bowls full!
I raise my kids 