If you adore your little one, you naturally want to see them thrive. But let’s face it, dinner can be a battleground for many toddlers. My friend Sarah’s daughter starts her refusal to eat right around 3 PM and won’t touch food until the next morning. In a moment of desperation, Sarah’s mom advised her to just serve a meal that her daughter enjoys. But I had to remind her that I’ve seen my cousin fall asleep at the dinner table rather than take a single bite. Memories can be deceiving.
Here’s your guide on how to serve dinner to a toddler in 18 simple steps:
- Cook a meal you know your toddler will enjoy: Think buttered noodles (sans sauce!!!), chicken (but it must not resemble chicken!!!), and peas (preferably isolated from everything else on the plate!!!).
- At the last moment, due to a wild burst of optimism, you decide to sneak a tiny piece of salad onto their plate to help expand their palate, because, you know, growth.
- Set the dinner in front of your toddler and immediately question your decision about the salad. You pray to the toddler deities—Dora, Daniel Tiger, and Elmo—that they overlook the offending greens. Please, let them ignore the salad, little tornado!
- They spot the salad.
- Cue the chaos! You now have two options: A) Flee to safety and salvage your own dinner. B) Stand your ground and try to instill manners, reminding them that exclamations of “Yucky! Gross! Call Grandma!” are not dinner etiquette.
- You opt for the latter because abandoning ship would put you on the receiving end of a ton of parenting critiques about how your child will turn out to be a menace to society if you don’t enforce the salad rule.
- With resolve, your toddler finds themselves in timeout about 20 times over the next 45 minutes, and just when you think it’s finally your time to shine, it’s dinner time for the rest of the family!
- You attempt to enjoy your meal, all while listening to the painful yet oddly gratifying sobs from your toddler, who may just be learning a valuable lesson.
- You realize you tell yourself this every evening.
- Everyone else finishes their meal, cleans up, does laundry, watches TV, and enjoys life while you’re still on the front lines.
- Suddenly, your toddler claims they’re full and demands dessert—immediate, please! So adorable.
- You glance at their plate, noting they’ve consumed precisely zero food.
- You blurt out, “You need to eat three bites and try your salad before you can have dessert.” Sometimes your mouth just runs away with you, channeling your own mother.
- Your toddler, blissfully ignorant of counting, shouts, “No, five bites!”
- Your older child starts to explain, “But you know, five is more than…” and you shoot them your best “careful now, your screen time might be on the line” look.
- The family collectively avoids eye contact with the toddler, who, like a bashful giraffe, refuses to eat under scrutiny.
- After what feels like an eternity, your toddler manages to eat five bites (and even samples the dreaded salad!) all by themselves at the table, three hours after everyone else has finished.
- And if you’re lucky, they might just earn that dessert because, hey, you snuck in some oatmeal into that cookie, and those calories might just keep them going for one more day.
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In summary, feeding a toddler can be a real test of patience and creativity, but with a bit of humor and strategy, you can survive mealtime and perhaps even foster a love for a wider range of foods.