Question
My husband and I have been doing John’s “Fail-Safe Formula for Getting Kids to Eat Everything” for over two months with our almost 4-year-old daughter. We put one teaspoon of each of the served foods on her plate. If she eats them all, she can have seconds of anything. If she doesn’t eat them all, she isn’t offered any additional food. She can be so stubborn that she’d rather skip several meals in a row than give in to eating the food on her plate. We don’t offer snacks and the food we are giving her at meals is healthy but not strange (watermelon, mashed potatoes, berries, etc…) We are convinced that her disdain for berries, for example, has nothing to do with the taste or texture, but rather it is her way of controlling the situation. There are some foods that she will eat now that she didn’t eat 2 months ago, but she will take way too long to eat them. We’ve been setting the timer for 5 minutes and she must eat the 1 teaspoon of fruit within that time frame. She plays around with the food, talks, and “stalls”. When the timer goes off and she isn’t finished, she has to leave the table. She cries but then quickly gets over it. She might eat all three teaspoons if we let her sit there for an hour but that just isn’t reasonable. Both my husband and I are more strong-willed than she is. We don’t beg her to eat or do anything of the sort. When she is hungry she is temperamental and doesn’t sleep well at night. That creates a domino effect of misbehaviors, meltdowns, and fatigue. How can we get her to not only eat the foods she is served but also eat them within a normal timeframe?
